No Sanctuary

by Z. J. Cannon

  “You already said that.”

  “Blond hair,” she repeated. “Unless… maybe it was red?” Her voice was quieter now, almost like she was talking to herself. “And his eyes… they were… they were so unusual. A color I’d never seen before. So why can’t I remember what that color was?”

  “What about his name?” I asked. “Or the name of his human pet?”

  “His name was… it was…” She stared at the floor for a long time. When she looked up at me again, I caught a hint of fear in her eyes. “I ate lunch with him every week for almost three months. I must have known his name.”

  “A minute ago, you said a year.”

  “Did I?” She blinked. “I did. Is that how long it was?” She stared at the floor again, for so long I thought maybe the magic lingering in her mind had fried something in her brain. Because there was magic at work here. He had done something to make her forget; there could be no other explanation.

  Which made me even more convinced that I was on the right track.

  “It’s all right,” I said, before she could get too lost in the remnants of the enchantment. “It doesn’t matter.” Clearly I wasn’t going to get any more useful information about this fae, no matter how long she spent puzzling over her scrambled memories. But she had already given me one major clue. Someone from the Summer Court had been setting this up for a long time—longer than I had suspected. Out of all the humans in the world, he had chosen Rina Ashante—someone the Summer Court feared—and maneuvered her into a position where anyone who needed advice about working with the fae would turn to her. And then he, or someone working with him, had given this Charles Engstrom a nudge of his own, and Engstrom had fallen into Ashante’s lap.

  And then, somewhere along the line, the two of them had gotten tangled up with Ellison… I shook my head, trying to clear it of the disconcerting suspicion that I had been pushing checkers around on a chessboard all this time.

  Ashante looked up. She blinked slowly at me. “What were we talking about?”

  For now, I would have to let that line of inquiry go. I didn’t want to scramble Ashante’s brain too badly before she had a chance to let me out of here, after all. “Charles Engstrom,” I told her. “Specifically, where and how I can find him.”

  “You mean we skipped to the end already?” She pouted, although I was sure she wouldn’t have called it a pout. Her eyes looked clearer now. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me an interview for my next book first. It’s not like you have anywhere else to go tonight.”

  I glared silently at her through the bars.

  She sighed. “All right, well, can you at least tell me whether the sighting of you in Vietnam in the 1900s was real? I haven’t been able to confirm—”

  “I’m not interested in answering your questions.” Especially when this woman already knew way too much. “If you’ll remember, I came here for answers from you, not the other way around.”

  She gestured to the bars, again stopping just short of bringing her arm within grabbing distance. “And which of us is in the position to be asking questions?” She recovered from her pout enough to shoot me a sunny smile. “Don’t worry. The bars are purely for my protection. Well, and to keep you in one place long enough to hear me out. But I meant what I said outside, you know. I’m interested in making a deal.”

  “A deal,” I repeated flatly. She had me in a cage. She could do whatever she wanted with me. And what she wanted was to negotiate?

  Lawyers. They were as slippery as the fae. And as dangerous. I would have trusted her more if she had come right out and tried to kill me.

  Ashante nodded. “No matter what you did to Ellison, and no matter what you do to me, it won’t mean anything if you don’t get your hands on Engstrom. If you do track him down, on the other hand… well, without Engstrom, there is no Arkanica. You didn’t need to push Ellison out that window, and you don’t need to do whatever you came here to do to me. If you want to destroy Arkanica, what you need to do is destroy Charles Engstrom.”

  She might as well not have wasted the words. I had figured all this out already, or near enough. “Get to the point. What are you offering?”

  “What do you think I’m offering? You want to cut off the head of the beast. I’ll give him to you. No human alive knows how to find Engstrom but me. That’s not an exaggeration. Even that woman who runs his errands for him doesn’t know where he really lives. You won’t get his location anywhere else, not unless you want to go through the nearest portal and ask around in the Summer Court. If you kill me, that will be your only option. And I don’t think you want to do that, am I right?” She flashed me another quick smile.

  I answered only with a level stare.

  She nodded as if I had spoken. “I thought so. In exchange, I want your promise that you’ll leave me unharmed, from now until the end of my natural life.”

  “Leaving you free to rebuild Arkanica on your own?” I shook my head. “I don’t need Engstrom that badly. I’ll find him another way.”

  “Yes, you do. And no, you really won’t. But I had a feeling you would say that. So I’m willing to sweeten the deal. If you give me that promise, I won’t just tell you how to get to Engstrom. I’ll give you my solemn word that I will spend my life opposing Arkanica to the best of my ability, and using my expertise to assist the fae however and wherever I can.”

  I blinked, and drew back from the bars. That was not what I had expected.

  I had several questions, but one that seemed the most obvious. “Why bother making a deal with me, when you could just kill me right here?”

  “You make it sound so easy.” Ashante laughed and shook her head. “Ever since I found out the truth about the fae, I’ve found your story uniquely fascinating. You have every reason to hate humanity and the fae, and yet you’ve spent your life putting yourself in danger to help them. And now you seem to have branched out to protecting the fae, who you have even less reason to like.”

  “If this is a lead-in to another recruitment speech, ask Ellison how that went for him.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a lot smarter than him.” All at once, her smile disappeared. Her voice went flat. “And if I thought there was any chance you would join forces with Arkanica, I would have tried to kill you already.”

  I blinked again, and tried to figure out when I had lost the thread of this conversation. I had a feeling it had happened before I had walked through the front door.

  “My point is, I’ve devoted quite a lot of time and effort to studying you,” Ashante said. “Of course, there isn’t that much to find. But what little there is paints a disturbingly clear picture. Every time a human has tried to kill you, you’ve survived. Every time one of the fae has tried to kill you, you’ve survived. And you can’t say the same for a lot of the people who have made the attempts.” She shook her head with a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t share Ellison and Engstrom’s weakness. That’s hubris, in case you’re wondering. I find it hard to look at hundreds of years’ worth of these stories and come away thinking I, of all people, will be the one who manages to bring you down. You’re already looking for a way out of that cage—did you think I didn’t notice? I could try to succeed where so many others have failed, and probably die in the attempt. Or, for the price of a promise, I could keep myself alive.”

  “So that’s it? You’re ready to give up that quickly? Where’s the speech about how you’re saving the world? Ellison dove out a window to keep me from getting Engstrom’s location—that’s how much he believed in your cause. But you… all I have to do is sit here on the other side of an iron cage, and you’re ready to roll over on the person you claim is the key to your whole operation.”

  This time her laugh was sharper and more cynical. “I loved fairies when I was a kid. And unicorns. Mermaids, too. If it sparkled, had magic, and wasn’t real, I probably had a picture of it in my bedroom. Can you imagine what it’s like to grow up and get some boring adult job, and then find out that your c
hildhood fascinations were real after all? It became an obsession for me. I had to turn chasing down legends into my career, or I would have stopped working entirely and spent all my time doing it for free.” Her gaze hardened. A flash of pain crossed her face as she said, “And now my legacy will be turning all that childhood magic into the world’s best battery.”

  I didn’t know what to say—what did she want me to do, feel sorry for her?—so I said nothing.

  “I’ve wanted out for a long time,” she said after a moment. “When I made my proposal to Engstrom, I didn’t understand what it would be like. Ellison always liked to pretend it was about making a difference—saving the world, like you said. I never had those illusions. It was about cold hard cash for me, pure and simple. I thought the sheer amount of money involved would be worth becoming a storybook villain. But the money isn’t coming in yet. Maybe not ever, if you have your way. Meanwhile, you’re picking us off one by one. And all I have to show for my years of effort is the knowledge of what we’ve done.” She sagged, like she was a balloon and all the air had left her along with her words.

  “And you’re willing to sell out Engstrom in order to get out yourself? As redemption arcs go, that one leaves a lot to be desired.” Not that I wanted to talk her out of it. No, what I wanted was to understand why she was offering me this deal in the first place. And if I could trust a word she said.

  “Engstrom was stupid enough to make a deal with the fae. That’s what got us all into this mess, you know. If he hadn’t gone to them in the first place, he would never have come to me for help. If he hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have been blinded by my own greed. I would have been perfectly happy as a professor at a school no one has heard of, publishing in journals no one reads.”

  She was understating her own reputation by a significant amount. It wasn’t as if she would have spent her life in obscurity if she hadn’t helped create Arkanica. But I let her continue.

  “And his fae connections are the reasons we can’t walk away now.” She surged to her feet, hands clenched at her sides. “Charles Engstrom can go to hell.”

  “One problem with this deal you’re offering,” I said. “You’re human. I’m not. Once I agree to this, there’s nothing to stop me from breaking your promise, and leaving me bound by mine.”

  Ashante raised her eyebrows in what looked to me like approval. “You’re smarter than the songs say. I’m not surprised.”

  I frowned. “What did they say?” I shook my head. “On second thought, I’d rather not know.” I had too many reasons to hate humanity as it was.

  “Which is why,” said Ashante, as if I hadn’t spoken, “I’m willing to do something incredibly stupid.” She took a deep breath. “As a show of good faith, I’ll lower the bars and give you the information you want before you make your promise. If it seems like a fair deal to you, then you can give me your binding promise. If not, well, I guess we’ll see which of us can win that fight after all.” She didn’t look like she relished the thought.

  I did my best not to choke. For one of the fae, that offer would have been unthinkable. “And how will I know the information is genuine?”

  “How will I know you won’t kill me as soon as you have Engstrom’s location?” she countered. “We’re both going to have to extend a little trust.”

  I studied her unreadable eyes, and thought it over silently. I didn’t trust her. And the thought of granting lifetime immunity to a human who was so deeply involved with Arkanica—let alone one who had no magical obligation to live up to her end of the bargain, and was so adept at making these kinds of deals that the fae themselves feared her—set off all my inner alarms. But what was my alternative? Wait until I could get the better of her, then torture the information out of her when she would have given it to me willingly?

  It was an option. I could already see how it would play out. I could smell her blood on my hands. My stomach turned.

  You’re going to regret this, a voice in my head warned. I ignored it as I nodded. “Set me free. Tell me where he is. We’ll see where to go from there.”

  She pressed a button on the wall. With a mechanical rattle, the bars sank back into the floor.

  I was free. I could kill her right now, if I wanted. After I got Engstrom’s location from her, which I doubted would be difficult. It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve it. If she was right, she had ever bit as much blood on her hands as Ellison had.

  But she had trusted me. And we all had to make compromises.

  She tensed, ready to run. I didn’t move, except to cross my arms in front of my chest. “Where is Charles Engstrom?”

  And she told me.

  Chapter 25

  My stomach lurched along with the small speedboat as I stepped off the dock. The smell of old fish that greeted me as soon as I sat down in the boat wasn’t helping, I was sure. But mostly, the problem was the water itself. Under the moonlight, the ocean stretched far into the distance, with no end in sight. Moonlight glittered off the waves like a hundred malevolent eyes.

  When the boat jerked again, I tensed, imagining something with too many legs and too many mouths rearing up under me. Then I realized I had done it to myself. I had shifted my weight automatically to avoid the puddle of brackish water in the seat, and the boat had moved right along with me. My attempt hadn’t even worked. The saltwater was already soaking into the seat of my pants.

  Funny—in Hawaii, I had spent most of every day on the beach, and had a fantastic view of the ocean from my bedroom window. Back then, I had felt right at home at the edge of the water, basking in the sun. When I had looked out the window at night, the moonlight had made me think of diamonds, not eyes watching me in the darkness.

  But this beach had as little in common with that one as this sad little speedboat did with a cruise liner. For one thing, even when I had walked the docks earlier under the blaze of the midday sun earlier, it hadn’t filled me with that glorious summer heat. The air near the ocean was at least ten degrees cooler than farther back from the shore. The day had been warm, but not hot by any stretch of the imagination. I had looked forward to seeing the ocean again, but that walk had left me with a deep sense of disappointment.

  Not only that, but I was beginning to remember why I had spent most of my beach time on the shore, taking in the rays and watching the waves from a safe distance. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the water. Not really. What did I have to be afraid of? Even if I spontaneously forgot how to swim and managed to breathe in enough water to drown, I would only wash up on shore a few hours later, coughing up saltwater and trying to remember how to breathe again. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t done it before. Enough times that just feeling the rhythm of the waves underneath me brought back a host of queasy memories.

  All right, so maybe I was a little uneasy around the water. Which made the thought of crossing several miles of ocean in this rocking, creaking boat, with my nose full of fish stink and my thighs wet and itchy from the puddle I was sitting in, less than appealing. Especially since I had never sailed a speedboat. If that was even the right word for it. Did you sail a speedboat or drive it? It wasn’t as if the thing had a sail, after all. That, I could have managed. I had spent a couple of decades at sea, once upon a time, before my first drowning had put me off the water.

  I slid the boat’s key into place and turned. Nothing happened. The owner had told me it was finicky, when I had met him on the docks and made noises about considering buying one myself. He had been eager to answer any question I had, especially later that night over drinks. I had a feeling he had been hoping something would happen between us—something besides me getting him drunk and then stealing the key to his boat, that is. It was why I had picked him in the first place. I might have been out of practice, but I still knew how to read the signs of interest.

  I felt bad about using him the way I had—at least in a distant, intellectual way. But the guilt had never reached my gut, even when I was sliding the key out of his pocket. I had nearly help
ed a crime syndicate sell a shipping container full of children. I had made a deal with one of the architects behind Arkanica. And that wasn’t even getting into the dozens of minor crimes that had brought me to this point. Stealing someone’s boat hardly registered on my radar anymore.

  I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.

  But I could figure that out after I dealt with Engstrom.

  Of course, if this boat turned out to be a dud, I would have to go through the same thing all over again tomorrow. I turned the key again. This time the boat roared to life under me like an angry bear.

  I jumped. I may even have yelped. When I had myself under control, I stared grimly out at the empty expanse of ocean, and reminded myself why I was doing this.

  Engstrom was out there.

  That was what Ashante had told me, at any rate. It remained to be seen whether she could be trusted. For all I knew, she had sent me out here in the hope that I would fall overboard and get myself killed. Or maybe end up the meal of one of the dark shapes my brain was still trying to convince me I saw moving under the water. I was banking on the fact that she knew that wouldn’t be enough to put me down permanently. And that if she did give me bad directions, the first item on my agenda would be to track her down and insist that she correct her error. I had given her the promise she had asked for—but I had made it contingent on her telling me the truth about Engstrom’s current location.

  I had expected her to object, but she hadn’t even seemed surprised. That, more than anything else, had tilted me toward believing she had meant what she said. She wasn’t a true believer like Ellison had been. She was a would-be supervillain who had decided too late that she didn’t like the fit of the costume, and was willing to sacrifice her partner for the chance to stop the machine she had set in motion.

  This small tourist town a little ways south of Boston was where she had told me to start. Sail north-northwest for exactly twenty-six miles, she had told me. Don’t let yourself veer the slightest bit off-course, or you’ll miss it. Simple enough, at least in theory, and the boat came equipped with a compass. Now all I had to do was ride this angry bear through the frigid, choppy ocean for twenty-six miles, and hope I didn’t run out of gas on the way.