Exile

by Caleb James

  “She’s my sister.”

  “I know. But right now May has control of her, and we don’t know how, though we’re getting a better sense of why.”

  “I can’t stay.”

  Charlie glanced at Alex’s IV bag. Like the woman in the hall, he’d been dosed with narcotics to numb the pain from thousands of nerve endings burned raw. “You can’t even stand, Alex. We’ll find Alice.” He glanced around to make certain there were no doctors or nurses in view and cranked up the rate on Alex’s drip.

  “But how?”

  Jerod glanced back at him as Nimby returned to Alex’s shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “You rest… you sleep,” she cooed. “You sleep, Alex Nevus. Sleep, sleep, sleep.”

  Charlie wept. He hated this sense of helplessness, of not knowing what to do. This wasn’t a fire, where he’d been trained and knew the course of action. Like the overwhelmed intern, his thoughts ricocheted from Alice to Alex to Liam, out there trying to do God knows what. Even Nimby’s panicked words crushed him. There has to be a way.

  Jerod spoke. “He said she tried to kill you… both of you.”

  “She did.”

  Jerod nodded. “I saw her come out the front door. I knew it wasn’t Alice.”

  “Did she see you?” Charlie asked.

  “No, I wanted to go to her… but….”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve been to this rodeo, Charlie. I know what May can do and that life—human or fey—doesn’t matter to her. She headed south. And then you came out with Alex. Thirty seconds earlier and she might have seen you…. Thank you, Charlie. I know he’s hurt. Shit!” Jerod’s jaw clenched, and tears spilled. “Thank you. He’s alive, you both are, and that’s what matters.”

  “It’s not,” Alex croaked, though the drugs made it hard for him to speak and to keep his eyes open. “It won’t matter if we can’t stop her. Alice. I should have known. I’m sorry, sorry… sorry.” His lids fluttered. He sank into the mattress. The pain of his burned back caused him to wince and then relax.

  “Thank God,” Jerod said. He gazed on the man he loved, who had nearly died, and if not for the potent narcotic, Dilaudid, would be prowling the streets in search of his possessed sister.

  Charlie pulled out his cell and called Finn. “I’m at Bellevue.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I pulled Alex Nevus from a building on Murray Hill. Look, Finn, are you someplace you can talk?”

  “Yeah, I’m in my truck. We’ve been instructed to take whichever scene is closest, and if there’s already a marshal there, move to the next and call it in.”

  “It’s… her. All of this.”

  “Yeah, I get that. And Charlie, if you’re not hurt, what the hell are you doing at the hospital?”

  “I think you know.”

  “You’re worried about Liam, and I heard about your folks’ house.”

  “It’s bigger than that, Finn.”

  “Tell me.”

  “How many fires tonight?”

  “Last count 132.”

  “Okay, so we know that the first one on Saturday, where I pulled Liam out, was probably meant for him.”

  “Got it. Not a coincidence.”

  “And then Alex’s sister’s place, and ready for the rabbit hole?”

  “Already down here, but look, there’s a trap door.”

  “His sister is possessed by Queen May. She tried to kill us both, and she nearly did.”

  “Crap! What saved you?”

  Not expecting the question, Charlie paused. “Liam.”

  “Wait, you left out something. Liam was there?”

  “No. I don’t know where he is, and I’m freaking out that he’s going to go after her himself and get himself killed.”

  “Whoa, Charlie. Chill. How could Liam save you if he wasn’t there?”

  “I love him, Finn. He doesn’t know that, and as I thought about him… really thought about him, it did something… like, broke the spell.” The words choked in his throat.

  There was silence.

  “Finn?”

  “Thinking… that’s what saved Alex the first time. Apparently love really is a kind of magic…. Not that I’d know. So that’s two things, right? We know these fires are deliberate, your home, the Nevuses’ apartments old and new, and likely all of these others.”

  “They could be diversions.”

  “True, but it’s the only lead we’ve got. Look, I can be at Bellevue in twenty. We can check this out.”

  “So what does it mean that she sent missiles to 132 buildings in the five boroughs?”

  “What we’ve always known, kid. New York City is filled with weird shit, and we’re about to find out how much.”

  “Finn, she’s dangerous. She just looked at me, said a few words, and I froze, as in could not move.” Charlie heard Finn inhale and then the crisp snap of the marshal turning on the siren.

  “We don’t have a choice, do we, Charlie?”

  “Not seeing one.”

  “Wait for me outside. I’m pulling up a schematic of the fires. Any way of narrowing things down? You know, like where she’s more likely to be?”

  Charlie glanced at Jerod, who stood sentinel over the now sleeping Alex. “Yeah, she was headed south from the Murray Hill fire.”

  “Good. I’m cutting across on Thirty-Fourth. I’ll be there in five.”

  They hung up.

  “I’ve got to go,” Charlie said.

  Jerod glanced up. “Be careful, Charlie. She’s going to look like Alice, but….”

  “Yeah, I know.” Charlie looked at the fairy parked on Alex Nevus’s shoulder. “Nimby, I don’t know how this works… any chance you’d come with me? I could use someone who knows about magic.”

  The fairy’s pointed ears twitched. Her bloodred eyes fixed on him. She looked from Jerod and then to Alex, the man she’d been attached to since his birth nineteen years ago. The times they’d been separated were so painful, like a piece of her had been ripped off. She nodded, kissed Alex’s cheek, zoomed across and did the same to Jerod’s, and with a blur of orange-and-black wings, lit on Charlie’s shoulder. “We go to war. We go to fight. We likely die, but we do right.”

  Thirty-Two

  MAY GAZED in the window of a dress shop filled with glittering gowns. She caught her reflection in the glass, wonderfully smooth skin, china-blue eyes, and hair the color of ripe wheat. “I am pretty again. Pretty, pretty… and hungry.”

  She fluffed the stiff tulle tutu she’d found in Alice’s closet. It’s not right… not at all. It doesn’t fit. I look like a little girl… but I’m not. She examined her long toned legs and breasts that swelled beneath soft white cashmere. She felt her toes squished in the too small ballet slippers. This is no look for a queen.

  Torn between her hunger and the need for a better outfit, she flicked her forefinger against the thick plate glass. A spider fracture blossomed. She blew on it. The window shattered into thousands of glittery shards.

  The cool smell from the shop spilled out and beckoned. The burglar alarm wailed, adding its impotent scream to hundreds of others. Carefully she lifted one dainty foot and then the other and climbed into the mannequin-filled window. Her hands flew up the sides of something floor-length, shimmery, and green. Lovely, but too mother of the bride. She rested her cheek against a cherry-red strapless number. Velvet, so soft. She worked it free from the mannequin when her eye caught on a recessed lit display in the back of the shop. Her breath caught as she stepped down from the window and into the store. Perfect. Midnight-blue satin, corset top, black lace overlay. Even the satin pumps. Yes. Knowing it would fit, she stripped naked in the shop, and like a snake shedding its skin, she stepped into a tea-length gown of blue satin and black lace. She twirled in the mirror, letting her silken hair fall across creamy white shoulders. I will let this body grow a bit longer but not too long. The swell of her young breasts was perfect for the dress that nipped in tight at her waist and flared out at midcalf. I a
m a beautiful dark flower.

  From a display of fringed shawls, she grabbed one of a matching blue worked through with gold thread. Perfect. And with her hunger near insatiable, she threw the shawl around her shoulders, stepped over broken glass, and emerged like the queen she was onto the street.

  A handsome stranger approached. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She turned her blue-eyed gaze toward him. “How kind.” A window exploded down the street.

  “It’s not safe out here,” he said, his eyes fixed on hers.

  “Walk with me.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Her hand found his. So young, so vital. And just as she had with the Asian man, each step robbed a year from him. Sweet and tasty.

  Filled with the lovely blonde vision in a dress of deep blue, the man never noticed how his life flowed from him into her. He dropped to his knees, a man who’d started the day as a twenty-nine-year-old commodities broker and died that night as a nonagenarian.

  Alice, trapped in her head and in addiction, stirred from a dusty dream. Clay was in it. He needed to tell her something. She looked at the old man dead at her feet. Where did I get those shoes? They look like they hurt. She knew the dead man should bother her. He didn’t. The wonderful feeling she’d been wrapped in since first tasting that sticky powder, more like a resin, was losing steam.

  I know, sweet. Never fear, Queen May is here. And you’re right, these mortals make a tasty snack, but nothing more. Amuse-bouche on the way to fatter fare… and fairy dust.

  May’s thoughts settled Alice. But for how long?

  The drugged teen fretted. Why didn’t we take my backpack? I need dust. I need it now!

  “You’re out of your mind,” May said aloud as she abandoned the dying man, and walked as fast as her satin pumps could manage. Alice, dear child, I will get you dust, but I will not ruin this outfit with a backpack! And you are right, there’s little point in empty calories. You need dust, and I need….

  She stopped, well away from the crowd who’d gathered around the shriveled corpse. She sniffed the air. The tall buildings obscured her view. She listened to the sirens, knowing enough of this world from two prior visits that they were like locator spells for tragedy. She paused and reflected. This is all my doing. And I’m just getting started. Like a starlet taking the stage at the Oscars, she was filled with pride. This is all me, and this time no one is going to fuck things up!

  Dust, Alice whimpered. Her wonderful feeling, the euphoria of all being well, was unraveling. Sirens and images of Alex in the arms of a firefighter—She killed them.

  No, May thought, feeling the teen’s panic. You will not infect me with fear. I told you you’d have dust, and so you shall. You will always have dust, buckets of it.

  Goody.

  May spotted her target in a smoldering brownstone on West Twenty-Eighth. Dwarfed between two high-rise luxury condominiums, the fire had burned hot, leaving nothing but the brick shell of the nineteenth-century home. That and, of course, fairy dust.

  Yes, please, Alice thought. I need it.

  May surveyed the scene. Orange plastic barriers, warnings to stay back. A lone police car, none of the big red trucks. Other fish to fry. Look at what I’ve done. And think of what I’m going to do. Just the start.

  Dust, please.

  Yes. Careful of her dainty shoes, May crossed the barriers and descended a side staircase. An iron gate had been ripped from its hinges, and a charred door hung open as she entered a garden apartment, into what had originally been the kitchen. She listened for the hum and sizzle of fairy fire. There was none. She smelled the dust, which was fine for Alice but did almost nothing for her. A pleasant little buzz, but I can take it or leave it. That’s not what caused her to salivate. Where are you?

  Dust. Please, hurry.

  Fine. With efficiency of movement, she dipped below fallen beams and came to the heart of devastation. I did this.

  Hurry.

  Fine… dust heads, all the same. Realizing she’d need a large and steady supply of dust to keep her haffling host silent, she knelt and ran a hand over a patch of glittery white resin. It stuck to her fingers. She rolled a bit into a ball the size of an M&M and popped it into her mouth.

  Goody! Alice squealed, sighed, and then went silent.

  “This could get annoying. I should have grabbed a purse.” Still crouched, May rolled several dust bunnies, the term used by dust heads in the Unsee. Careful to not ruin her dress, she ran her fingernail into the hem, made a slight opening, and taking advantage of the dust’s natural stickiness, she tucked them away. How long will she sleep? Alice, are you there? Alice…. Perfect. Now my turn. She stood and felt the air caress her bare skin. She gently closed the back of her throat and rasped up breath from deep inside. She smelled the smoke of fairy fire as it passed without burn through her lips. A stream of cookie-flavored smoke left her mouth, and like the directional arrow on a compass, she followed it. Come out, come out, wherever you are. It led her up debris-strewn stairs to the main level. The wisp turned, unconcerned about the devastation of the once-lovely building with its ruined stained-glass windows and charred oak balusters. Up it went, with May gliding in its path. This is how it was meant to be. Each passing moment in the See, telling her, reassuring her, this time you got it right. I have magic here. I have all my magic…. And I want more. She glided across gaping spans of flooring that had ignited like birthday candles. She hovered in midair and looked down to where she’d stopped and rolled dust bunnies. I will rule here. And there, and everywhere. The trail of smoke through her lips pulled her forward. She flew to the room’s edge, its plaster walls reduced to dust and jagged slats. Her feet skimmed over ruined carpet as she followed the smoke. And there you are.

  The creature, curled up in death, appeared human. He wasn’t. Her fingertips brushed back his soft auburn locks and played across the tips of surgically altered ears. She examined his face. Do I know this one? He is a Fall. Something about him was familiar but like all the others who’d fled from her rule. Traitor, you had this coming. She held her hand before her face, and with forefinger pointed, willed the nail into a razor-sharp talon. Placing it in the notch of the dead creature’s neck, she pressed down, and like a knife in butter, slit him open. Her mouth watered as she reached in and ripped out first his heart and then the blood-engorged liver. Mindful of her dress, she softened the flesh at the corners of her mouth, unhinged her jaw, and enjoyed her first real meal since escaping the Mist.

  Mm, mm, mm. Delicious. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d devoured a creature so lovely, so toothsome. Her misty fare of trolls and ogres was now a thing of the past. So good! Blood and magic trickled down her throat and swirled in her gut. For the first time in years, she felt full. But just like Alice and her dust cravings, May knew the hunger would return. She licked her lips as her jaw hinged back to a human form. The aftertastes of the beautiful fey were rich with hints of berry and vanilla.

  She floated away from the eviscerated fey. Traitor you were… but delicious you are. The enormity of what she’d accomplished gave her pause. From inside the Mist, I did this. And now I have a body, and I have my magic. I will retake all that was mine. All the doubt that nipped at her thoughts dissipated. I can do this. I will do this.

  Memories of an ancient time, a time before the See, the Unsee, and the Mist were three. When there was a single world, and she and her sisters, Lizbeta and Katye, ruled the Fey. A time when May had been centuries young and fallen in love… with a human. Or rather a man who was mostly human, most of the time.

  She grimaced and hissed, “This is your fault.” The face of her redheaded lover, like the coals of human fire, still burned. “Your fault.” That he’d betrayed her love stung. But what had never lessened and had fueled her hatred through centuries and millennia, was his deceit. How dare you! “But payback, it’s a-coming, lover. All you have taken, all my sisters have kept from me, I’m taking back.” The sound of her voice through Alice’s lips del
ighted her. She played with the inflection, a lilt here, a bit firmer there, just as she’d made beautiful music come from out of her now dead brother. “It’s time to tear down the walls between the worlds. There need not be three.” She thought of her traitorous sisters. “The queen of all, she will be me.”

  Thirty-Three

  LIAM, LIANNA, Frederick, seventeen fey who passed as human, and three, like Nimby, who were visible to only a few, marched beneath the Washington Square Arch, headed north. Each plume of fairy fire, like X marks the spot, revealed May’s inhuman targets. Some had escaped the carnage. Others were dead, as were many humans.

  As the band approached each blaze, hope surged, and a new member would join their ranks. But then they’d come upon a dead sprite or tiny little fey gasping its last. “She brings war,” Liam stated, ever more certain of what needed to be done. Kill the haffling Alice, then kill May. But then he’d look up to the night sky and know in his gut. She is too strong.

  He kept those thoughts to himself.

  As they marched, he learned. “I’d not imagined so many of us were in the See.”

  With Lianna on his right and Frederick Flower on his left, they educated him on the life of sidhe expats.

  “We stick to the cities,” Lianna said. “Except for the trolls and ogres, of course. It’s harder for them. They prefer farms and places with land and deer and game. But for us, it’s not difficult to find work after the surgeries.”

  “Tell me of those,” Liam asked, having wondered if the loss of his ears and carnivore teeth was a typical price of passing between worlds.

  Frederick pulled back his thick auburn hair to reveal two perfect human ears. “There are surgeons. The one most of us use is sidhe. Even the human ones ask few questions in return for cash. We say it’s birth defects, and they ask us questions and wonder why our brains aren’t addled. Apparently there are genetic conditions that can give a human pointed ears. Though when I learned of that, my thought was these could be hafflings. But no, it seems that humans born with pointed ears have terrible problems. So they take our money, and we get the cut and shave.”