by Z. J. Cannon
I knew they were excuses. That didn’t mean I cared.
“You’re not going anywhere.” For how softly he was speaking, the ominous rumble of Jimmy’s voice drowned out everything else in the room for me. I looked over his shoulder, and was surprised when no one else seemed to notice.
I tried to push past him. He reached out with both hands and shoved me in the chest. I landed right back in my seat—as much from surprise as anything else. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone who knew what I was had dared to touch me like that—anyone who didn’t have murder on their mind, at least.
Although going by the look in Jimmy’s eyes, I wouldn’t have put murder past him.
“First you say Arkanica is coming back. Now it’s your son—if you even have one. You always have an excuse, don’t you? Is this how you were able to get away with everything you’ve done? Because you’ve always had a story ready when someone starts to ask questions?”
“There is no ‘everything I’ve done.’ I’ve already told you I didn’t do any of those things.” I tried to keep my voice calm. Tried not to notice how many people were still looking our way. “Arkanica is back—that wasn’t a lie. And yes, I have a son. He’s being held prisoner by the Winter Court, Queen Mab is personally overseeing his torture, and I may never get him back if you don’t let me go right now.” If it wasn’t already too late. Nikla could be well out of sight by now.
I stood again. Almost gently, he placed a hand on my chest.
“I haven’t forgotten how you saved the fae I took under my protection,” he said. “That’s the only reason I’ve never called the police on you, all the times I’ve caught you in here. Although I’ve been tempted. I knew people who died in that bomb you set.”
“I didn’t—” I stopped. The story about the bomb in downtown Hawthorne wasn’t precisely true, but it wasn’t exactly a lie either. I had killed those people. Or my magic had, when I had let it spiral out of control. And what was my magic but an expression of my deepest desires?
“But that doesn’t change the truth of what you are,” Jimmy continued. “You’re a dangerous man, Kieran Thorne. If something like you can even be called a man. And I won’t stand for you threatening one of my employees.”
“You don’t want to do this,” I said quietly. “I’ll give you one more chance to reconsider.”
“I could be telling you the same thing,” said Jimmy in the same low tone. “Look around. You really want to draw attention to yourself in front of all these people? Some of them are already watching us. How long before they recognize your face? If you get violent, half the bar will be on the phone with the police before you make it out the door.”
I tried not to let him see how much that thought got to me. “By the time the police get here, I’ll be long gone,” I said, and tried to believe it.
Speaking of long gone, Nikla probably already was. I shoved Jimmy aside, not holding back this time.
He stumbled back. I made it out of the booth, but before I could stop running, I felt something sharp against my neck. Something that burned with the cold of deep space.
I moved only my eyes, holding the rest of me still. And saw Jimmy pressing an iron knife to my throat.
“I told you I would have iron waiting for you if you tried to come back,” he said. “Did you think I was bluffing?”
All around the bar, conversations were dying out as people turned to face us. Some backed away. Others edged toward the door. Still more went for their phones.
“Is that… it can’t be. Is that Kieran Thorne?” somebody whispered. A palpable shiver rolled through the crowd at the sound of my name.
Jimmy and I stood frozen, each waiting for the other to make the first move. With every second that ticked by, I was more aware of how far away Nikla had to be by now. And how long it would take the police to get here, assuming one of those people who had pulled out a phone had already called them.
Then a shrill scream from outside made me jerk my head toward the door, almost slicing my own throat open in the process. The knife pressed deeper as Jimmy tensed. Our eyes met. We both knew that voice.
Nikla.
It took Jimmy less than a second to make his decision. He tucked the knife away, and we both ran for the door.
We only had to go half a block before we found her. I hadn’t seen the four men in the clown costumes leave the bar, but now two of them were sprawled across the sidewalk next to an unmarked white van, surrounded by pools of blood. A third, wearing an electric-blue wig, had wrenched Nikla’s hands behind her back and was about to fasten a set of handcuffs around her wrists. I didn’t see the fourth.
Nikla was lying prone, and one of her eyes was already swelling up. There was plenty of her own blue fae blood on the sidewalk alongside the human red; I could see the slash in her dress where the knife had gone in. But knowing the fae, the wound had already healed. Unless the clowns had used iron, and I doubted they would have risked giving her iron poisoning. If they were taking the trouble to put handcuffs on her instead of just stabbing her through the heart, they wanted her alive.
I was halfway through unclasping my watch before my conscious mind caught up with me. I froze, acutely aware of where I was standing. Downtown Hawthorne. The last time I had let my magic loose in this town… I couldn’t finish the thought. Just like I couldn’t take off my watch.
Jimmy showed no such hesitation. With a roar, he rushed at the blue-wigged clown, knife raised.
Blue jerked his head up. He scrambled for his weapon. That distracted him enough that Nikla was able to wriggle out from under him.
“Nikla!” I called. “This way!”
She looked up, and saw me. Doubts flickered across her face. I saw her calculating her chances—was she better off with the clowns, or with me?
Blue raised his knife, still stained with Nikla’s blood. Jimmy knocked it out of his hand, and it skittered down the sidewalk. As Jimmy lunged for Blue’s neck, Blue dodged to one side, and slammed Jimmy hard against the van. A hollow, metallic thud reverberated through the street. Jimmy’s howl quickly drowned it out. Jimmy clutched his arm, which now hung at an unnatural angle. His knife fell, bounced, and landed underneath the van.
That broke Nikla out of her hesitation. She extended her arms toward Blue, palms out.
But before she could unleash her magic, the driver’s-side window of the van rolled down, just enough for someone to stick the long, thin tube of a tranquilizer gun through. I caught a glimpse of a curly red wig.
I raced forward, intending to knock Nikla out of the way. Before I could, a dart flew out and hit her in the arm. Not iron—otherwise her skin would already have started blistering and turning black. But as she pulled the dart free, she staggered back, swaying on her feet.
I wouldn’t have thought a human tranquilizer would be strong enough to work on one of the fae. But Nikla lowered her hands, and couldn’t seem to raise them again. She shook her head like she was trying to clear it. Her palms shot off a few faint sparks, but nothing else happened. Arkanica must have done enough experiments on the fae to have an idea of the right dosage.
Blue grabbed his fallen knife. He eyed Jimmy like he was trying to decide whether it was worth finishing him off. Jimmy sagged back against the van, face white, still cradling his broken arm. Blue tucked the knife away and went for the handcuffs instead. “Get ready to move!” he called to the clown in the driver’s seat.
“You’re… not… going anywhere,” Jimmy growled, his voice thick with pain. He bent down and felt under the van with his good arm, trying to reach his knife.
Blue ignored him. He strode up to Nikla, who had fallen to her knees. “Come on, you know when you’re beaten, don’t you?” he said, reaching for her wrist. “Be a good girl and make this easy on us both. Arkanica has a lot of money riding on getting themselves some new blood sources, and if I don’t bring someone back tonight, no bonus for me.”
Seeing him grab her wrist was what finally unfroze me. I wasn’t
even thinking about the information in her head. Only about the fae woman who had helped me, even if it was for her own selfish reasons. And I was thinking about Arkanica. I had seen what they did to their prisoners. I wouldn’t let them do it to anyone else.
And if taking off my watch in the middle of Hawthorne again was the only way to keep that from happening, then that was what I had to do.
I undid the clasp.
Nikla threw herself down flat on the sidewalk. The unexpected movement made me pause. It startled Blue, too—enough to make him lose his grip on her wrist. He cursed and grabbed for her again.
I expected her to run. Or to try—it only took a casual glance at her cloudy eyes to know she wouldn’t get very far. But instead, she fumbled under the van. Her movements were clumsy and unfocused, but desperation made her fast. Her fingers tore at the pavement, leaving smears of blue blood behind. Blue got hold of her wrist again, but didn’t manage to tug her back before her free hand found its prize. Jimmy’s knife.
Instantly, black blisters rose on her fingers. I winced in sympathetic pain. Blue let out another curse and reached for his own weapon. The clown in the van readied another dart.
If she had lunged out with the knife, they probably could have stopped her. Instead, she turned the knife inward and slammed it through her own heart.
“No!” Jimmy and I yelled at the same time.
I let the watch fall. Too late.
Jimmy yanked the knife free. But I could already see that it was too late. If the knife hadn’t been iron, she would have already been halfway healed. But she had gone for the iron knife on purpose. That had been the point. With the tranquilizer swimming through her system, she had known she couldn’t save herself. And she hadn’t trusted me to save her.
And why should she have? I had hesitated. I hadn’t done a thing to save her until it was too late to matter. And if I had, it would have been for my own selfish purposes.
Blue let out another curse. He climbed into the van, leaving Nikla’s body on the sidewalk with the other two clowns. The tires squealed as the van pulled away from the curb.
I reached down and slipped the watch back onto my wrist before I could do any damage. As satisfying as it might have been to rip the remaining attackers to shreds, it wasn’t worth what I might do to everyone else nearby. In theory, I was over the brief, intense hatred of humanity that had made me destroy the Hawthorne police station and everything around it. In theory. But I wasn’t ready to take that risk yet.
Jimmy was screaming in my face. The words reached me in a distorted blur of sound, like I was underwater. But I got the import well enough. He blamed me for this.
I didn’t bother trying to make out the words. I had more important things to worry about. Like the fact that the police had been on the way even before there were three dead bodies lying only a few feet away from me. Someone inside must have recognized me, just like Jimmy had threatened.
I had to get out of here. Let Jimmy pin this all on me if he wanted, and add it to the mile-long list of crimes I hadn’t committed.
But I couldn’t stop staring at Nikla’s body.
She was gone, and all her information with her. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t still go through the portal. It would be harder without Nikla’s guidance, but even if Mab’s entire army was waiting for me on the other side, that wouldn’t be enough to keep me from Lucien.
But I already knew I was going to stay.
Arkanica was still a threat, one that couldn’t be ignored. I couldn’t have gotten a more timely—or more vicious—reminder if I had asked for it. And not only were they back, they had started kidnapping fae out from under Jimmy’s nose again. Either they weren’t afraid of me anymore, or they were getting ready to go public with their technology, and needed all the blood sources they could get their hands on before they did.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip my watch from my wrist and turn everything in my line of sight to powder, out of pure helpless frustration. Lucien was being tortured by Mab at this very second. And I couldn’t stop it.
I didn’t do either of those things. What I did was turn to Jimmy, once he finally ran out of breath. “I’m going to stop them,” I said. Normally I never would have been that straightforward. Too much of a risk my magic would interpret it as a verbal contract, and try to kill me if I broke it. Tonight, I didn’t care.
It wasn’t about Nikla. Five minutes ago, I had been more than willing to kill her myself. It was about everyone who had died in Arkanica headquarters before I had gotten there. And all the others who would die if I delayed any longer.
Sirens screamed in the distance. Before Jimmy could say anything, I ran.
Chapter 7
Delaney hadn’t been kidding when she had said she planned to cook something special. I caught the scent of chicken in a rich cream sauce as soon as I walked in the door. Too bad the thought of food made my stomach churn. I tried to ignore my body’s protests and followed my nose.
I stopped in the dining room doorway, my eyebrows lifting.
This house had come equipped with a formal dining room, complete with a table that stretched longer than the entire shoebox-sized apartment where I had spent the winter. The table was carved from a dark, heavy wood that I suspected the fae had custom-grown for the purpose. The legs were carved to look like trees, complete with tiny leaves with tinier veins running down their centers, and each corner was a bird with wings of flame. Two of the four walls were full stained-glass windows, depicting what I could only assume were important battles between the Summer and Winter Courts, judging by the amount of pointy-eared figures on either side and the prodigious use of red.
Needless to say, neither of us had quite known what to do with the place. After a couple of awkward meals, we had, by silent and mutual agreement, packed up the fine china and begun taking our meals separately, in our own bedrooms. But today, Delaney had set a place for each of us, with a heaped plate of chicken at either end of the table. She was sitting at the far end, scrolling on the cheap throwaway smartphone that had come for her in Skye’s care package. Her food looked untouched.
I cleared my throat. Delaney jerked to attention; her phone hit the edge of the table. She barely caught it before it fell all the way to the floor. With visible effort, she smiled up at me, as if the mere sound of my voice hadn’t just scared her nearly to death.
“Chicken a la king,” she said, gesturing to the plates. “I used to make it for my son on his birthday. It was his favorite. We haven’t spent his birthday together in years—he makes plans with his own family now, I suppose—but it’s still the meal I associate with special occasions.” As she mentioned her son, a quick flash of pain crossed her face.
I did her the courtesy of pretending I hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. My meeting ran long. You didn’t have to wait for me.”
“Your delay doesn’t have anything to do with the news story I just read, does it? A man in a suit and a skeleton mask walked into the Drunken Scarecrow and pulled a knife on one of the waitresses.”
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea for me to ask Skye to get her that phone. “I didn’t hear anything about that,” I said, grateful that I had already gotten changed.
I waited for her to mention the bodies. She didn’t. Apparently Jimmy had managed to clean them up before the police had gotten there. Good. I didn’t need any humans asking questions about people with pointed ears, dead or otherwise.
“Any news on Lucien?” Delaney asked, her eyes sharpening with an anxiety I knew she wouldn’t admit to. She still insisted Lucien would simply walk through the door one day. I had given up on trying to convince her otherwise. I saw no reason to interfere with her chosen coping mechanism.
“Nothing,” I said, half a second too slowly. “Just like always.”
If Delaney noticed my hesitation, she didn’t show it. “We’ll be able to hear the story from him in person soon, when he and Kessa come back.” Only the way
she gripped her fork in white-knuckled fingers told me how tightly she was clinging to that story, and how afraid she was to let it go. If Lucien didn’t come back, all her plans and all her sacrifices would have been for nothing.
I answered with a noncommittal nod as I slid into my seat.
Delaney frowned. “I didn’t think about how far away you would be, all the way over there. We might as well be eating in different time zones. You can move closer, if you’d like.” But a slight tension in her jaw as she said the words told me how she felt about the idea of me getting any closer to her than necessary.
I forced a smile. “That would involve getting up again. And I just got comfortable.” I tried to keep my voice mild and nonthreatening, the way I always did around Delaney. As if that were enough to erase her memory of me holding her suspended in the air with my magic, face twisted in anger as I prepared to tear the skin from her bones for the crime of being human.
I tried to shut away my own memory of that day and focus on the meal in front of me. It really did smell divine. It was too bad I didn’t have any appetite left. After my conversation with Nikla, I didn’t think I would be hungry for meat for a long time to come.
Sitting at this ridiculous table with Delaney, making small talk and trying to do my best teddy-bear impersonation, was the last way I wanted to spend the remainder of my night. I wanted to smash every fae face on those stained-glass windows. Or drive out to the woods, tear off my watch, and reduce every tree within half a mile to sawdust. Better yet, drive back into downtown Hawthorne, say to hell with my agreement with Kessa, and march through the portal to find my son.
But this dinner wasn’t about small talk, I reminded myself. I was here to get the names from Delaney. The sooner I did, the sooner I could end the fight against Arkanica for good. And once I did that, I would be able to go after Lucien with a clear conscience, knowing I hadn’t chosen my flesh and blood over the countless victims Arkanica would rack up if they were allowed to go through with their plans.