“Why would I call for help? I invited you here." There was bravado in the words, but truth as well, and it helped steady Branwyn against the undertow of terror.
“And why would you do something like that? You’re not suicidal yet.” He winked and grinned. “I can tell these things.”
“If you’d wanted to hurt me, wouldn’t you have done that by now? I know you’ve been watching me from the Backworld. Or do you normally require an invitation before you get involved?”
He looked at her for a long moment, then reclaimed his chair and glass. “Every invitation I need is contained in what you are.”
Branwyn let herself breathe for a moment before she said, “So why have you been hanging around, then?”
Severin the kaiju settled back, swirling the amber liquid. “I’m protecting you, of course.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she observed. “But do go on.”
“Oh, I am. But the faeries keep trying to get to you, all the same.” He smiled. “Tarn’s little pets.”
Branwyn crouched to pick up her dropped glass, all nonchalant. Faerie is full of threats, Tarn had said. “What are you doing to them?”
“You don’t need me to answer that, cupcake. You already know.” He looked her over like she was a menu. “You’re serving as tender, delicious faerie bait. As you may imagine, this is very helpful when you’re trying to stem the faerie menace. All I have to do is stay near you, and they come right to me.”
Bait, Branwyn thought, and then Cupcake! She found herself longing for a crowbar, or her favorite hammer. Something to wrap her fingers around. Something she could use as a weapon, if she had to.
“No, you don’t want a weapon,” said Severin calmly. “If you had one, you’d be tempted to use it, and while you’re interesting, cupcake, you’re not nearly interesting enough to bleed for.”
“Stay out of my thoughts,” said Branwyn firmly, like she was telling a nosy child to stay out of her room. Just like that.
He shrugged. “Don’t think, then.” He drained his glass.
“Anyhow, you aren’t keeping the faeries away from me; I spoke to Tarn today.”
“I know. I got bored with the paper shadows. And it occurred to me that you could be even more helpful that way. Be my inside man, kind of thing.” He raised his eyebrows encouragingly.
“Woman,” said Branwyn automatically, then said, “What? I mean—what? Are you actually asking me to help you capture and—” She fell silent, staring at him.
“Murder,” he supplied helpfully. “Well, kill, anyhow. I don’t know if it qualifies as murder. It’s not like it’s permanent. At the moment.”
“If you’re so hot on this, why didn’t you just show up while I was visiting Tarn?” she demanded.
“Oh, you know how it is. All right, you don’t, cupcake. But in the heart of a faerie realm, invitations do matter. At least for me. It’s Tarn’s special place. He’s a bit more powerful there.” His glass was full again. So was Branwyn’s.
She put the glass down on an end table. “Well, don’t look for me to invite you. And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop preying on Tarn’s messengers.”
Severin shrugged. “I’m no worse than they are.”
“This I also have trouble believing,” she said flatly.
“I don’t know why. The angels created the Covenant to imprison the fae long before the Hush was put in place to inhibit the rest of us.”
“Tarn isn’t trying to co-opt me into a murder-for-fun scheme,” Branwyn pointed out.
“Oh, that’s probably true.” He raised his glass in a toast to her. “They would have a problem with that. I mean, once you kill a human, they’re much harder to play with. There’s so much else that can be done before death, and the fae like to do all of it.”
*
Branwyn slammed the door of her car and glared up at her family home, silhouetted against the setting sun. It hadn’t been a good day and she was prepared for the faerie in the attic to make it worse. The conversation with Severin had lingered with her all day through work, like a bad hangover. She'd jumped each time the bell over the garage office had chimed, and she couldn't stop thinking about what he’d said about the faeries and about her. She kept remembering his eyes, too, as much as she tried not to. He was a monster, he practically admitted it, and he wasn't any more trustworthy than the faeries, or Senyaza, for that matter.
Just as she'd finally started to listen to her own lectures on not brooding, a lady had tried to corner her at the garage where she worked, ostensibly making small talk while having her oil changed. And by “lady,” Branwyn meant “tabloid reporter.” She’d found out about Penny’s hospitalization and Branwyn’s friendship with her, and she wanted an exclusive scoop about what had happened to the daughter of the famous producer couple Viviana and Tomas Karzan. At first she’d expected Branwyn to gossip freely, and then she’d expected revealing her identity to pry open those gossip channels. Branwyn had locked her in the garage lobby, tossed to keys to José, and gone off to do some paint touch-ups, but the encounter had soured what was left of her day.
It wasn’t the presence of the reporter; they showed up sometimes around Penny, and always had. It was the idea that Penny, comatose, was reduced to a minor headline. Penny hadn’t minded talking to them, but Branwyn didn’t think she’d like this, especially not these stories. The tabloids liked the “drugs” angle. But it wasn’t any better than what had actually happened.
Branwyn didn’t like to think about what had ultimately taken Penny down. Because that was one thing Corbin had been very clear about: to commune so closely with a celestial that one’s soul was damaged, one had to voluntarily let them in. And now Penny was dying. If nobody did anything, she'd be that minor headline, plus some records in a Senyaza database. And nobody was going to do anything, just because they couldn't find anything in their “literature” to do and they wouldn't look beyond that. She had to learn more about faeries and their magic, not just for herself, but for Penny.
She slammed the house door, too. Her grandfather, the carpenter, would not have approved, but it warned everybody inside to stay out of her way. She wanted to find Tarn without losing her temper at anybody else.
A head poked into the hall from the living room. It was Jaimie, her stepfather. “It’s Branwyn,” he reported back over his shoulder. “Come see this, Branwyn. It’s pretty cool.”
Branwyn hesitated. The smell of sizzling onions and spices wafted through the air. She could hear the low murmuring of a video and the rest of the house was quiet. Whatever it was had pulled all of her family in already, interrupting dinner preparations.
Curiosity overcame her temper and she headed into the living room. Most of her family was clustered around a large laptop on the back table. Her mother, Holly, looked up and then moved to give her a one-armed hug. “Morgan caught this on his phone when he was downtown. Some kind of street performer.”
“I want to figure out how he’s doing it,” said Howl, over their youngest sister’s impressed ooh.
Branwyn frowned. That was the tone of voice Howl used when he was bothered about something.
“I want one, Mom. Can we go down there? Maybe he’s still there.” Meredith changed her focus almost immediately to her father, who wasn’t as good at resisting her wheedling. “Dad?”
“I’m sure he’ll be around again,” said Holly. “Don’t pester your father, please.”
Branwyn stopped trying to peer over heads and shoved closer, bumping Morgan out of the way and sidling past her mother until she was standing directly behind Howl, who sat in the operator’s chair.
On the screen, a tall, attractive man with long blond hair stood in a cluster of people. “Who’s next?” he asked, his softly accented words carrying over the murmur of the crowd. He noticed the camera and smiled at it before a teenage girl stepped forward.
“Me, please.” She was breathless and blushing. She held out her hand.
The man’s mouth quirked,
and he took her hand and kissed the back of her fingers. His lips lingered against her skin. Then vivid lines traced their way up her wrist and color bloomed inside the lines; when he finally removed his mouth, there was a vivid tattoo of a long-stemmed rose running up her forearm.
“I trust that didn’t hurt?” asked the artist.
The girl stared at him, then gave a faint, forced laugh. “It kind of tickled. How—how long will it last?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps a day. Perhaps a month.” He smiled again, slow and sexy. “Maybe it will go away when you next wash. It’s a surprise.”
The girl burbled thanks, and another woman, this one older, stepped forward to elbow her out of the way. “Could you do pixie wings for me? On my shoulders?” She turned to present the artist with a tanned expanse of skin framed by a backless tank top.
The artist laughed. “Oh yes.” The camera refocused as Morgan moved to get a better angle. This time, the artist dragged his finger in a rough triangle across her left shoulder and again, color and lines flowed out in a delicate filigree, forming the shape of a ragged-edged butterfly wing.
After he finished the first shoulder and moved to the second, Howl said, “Maybe I’ll take Meredith down there tomorrow and see if I can spot the trick.”
“Could they be plants? Were there professional cameras around?” asked Jaimie.
“I didn’t see anything bigger than a pocket camera,” said Morgan. “I should have asked one of those girls for a closer look.”
“Even if they were audience plants, how is it being done?” Howl sounded irritated by his own question. “Some kind of invisible ink reacting to something on his finger?”
“Who cares?” retorted Meredith. “It’s awesome. I wonder if they really last as long as he says.”
Branwyn watched the rest of the video, her mouth set in a tight line. She'd thought she was glad that the faeries had won a little freedom, but seeing magic performed publicly and casually made her uncomfortable. It was a symbol that the secrets of the world were being revealed, but it was also a symbol that those secrets existed at all. And it was a change she wasn't quite ready for. She really didn't want to be one of the giggling girls in the audience, watching passively as the world changed around them.
The video ended before the performance did, when Morgan was tugged away by a school friend, and when it did, her gathered family started to disperse. Her mother caught her hand, though. “You didn’t like the video, Branwyn?” She smiled. “If real tattoos were that painless, I’d get one myself.”
“They sell temporary tattoos at the store, Mom,” Branwyn said absently.
“Not the one I want,” said Holly, with a fond glance at her husband. “But tell me why the video made you so grumpy. Do you know something about the technique?”
“I might,” Branwyn replied. “But it’s just a guess,” she added quickly, but not quickly enough. Howl met her gaze.
“Tell us,” encouraged Holly, adding, “Did you come for dinner?”
“It’s not that I know the technique, just that I thought I recognized the artist. And I’m not in the mood for dinner. I just came by to get something out of the attic.”
Howl’s gaze sharpened and she gave him a quelling look before kissing her mother on the cheek. “I’ll come over for a meal this weekend. I’ll bring Marley, too.” Then she pulled away and ducked out of the room before anybody else could grab her. She made it all the way up to the attic stairs before Howl caught up with her.
“Branwyn, what’s going on?”
“Don’t be a pest, Howl,” she said hopelessly and bounded up the stairs. He climbed up behind her, closing within two steps. “Hey, don’t crowd me.”
“You vanished yesterday,” he said grimly. “You’re going to vanish again and I want to see how you do it.”
“I’m just checking on the ghost.” Inspiration struck. “I’m also working on an art project behind the small door. It’s a secret. You know, private?”
But little brothers never stopped being little brothers, even when they were in college. “You’re lying. I looked, Branwyn. I’m not an idiot. You vanished and I want to know how.”
Branwyn scowled, until it occurred to her that having a lookout could be useful. And with Rhianna, her closest sister, elsewhere, Howl was the next best choice. Unlike her younger siblings, Howl would listen to her warnings. He always listened, even if he'd learned to not always believe his sisters, and he was cartoonishly cautious. And he could help keep Brynn and her planned ghost documentary out of her way. Of course, the very act of explaining could be problematic and tedious.
Oh well. She could borrow a trick from Marley, who had let her draw her own conclusions at first.
“What do you think is going on?”
“A hidden door?” His hesitation told her that he’d investigated that possibility already. “Those sounds have to be coming from somewhere. I just can’t think where.”
“They are. Yeah, there’s a door. But not of wood. It goes somewhere else. Somewhere not here. And I don’t know the science, so don’t go asking me how. And no, you can’t come through with me. But you can watch me go through, if you like. Maybe you can figure something useful out. You can definitely keep Brynn and the other kids from getting involved.”
Howl nodded, accepting Branwyn’s authority with the resignation of a lifetime of dealing with overbearing older sisters. “What’s on the other side?”
“Another world, I think.” She watched him blink and narrow his eyes. “Don’t believe me. I don’t mind. But you know I could come up with a better story if I wanted to trick you.”
“You certainly have before,” he grumbled. “If you don’t want me to go through, how will you prove it?”
“I hope I won’t have to. Look, Howl, you know that guy on the video? There’s other stuff like that going on. And I think more is coming. Something happened recently and because of it, the world is changing. Street performers who can create body art without using paint are just the beginning.”
Uneasily, Howl asked, “The beginning of what?”
“I’ll find out. And when I do, I’ll give you a full report.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, and she grinned at him.
“Trust me. It’s easier this way. You don’t want to go getting in trouble. You’ve got college and everything.”
“It’ll happen anyhow,” he said bitterly. “It’s you.”
“Well, maybe you and me, we can keep it spreading to anybody else.” She reached up and ruffled his hair.
“And you won’t tell me anything?”
“Watch, instead.” And if push came to shove, if she ever had to prove something to Howl, she had ways to do that, too. Marley hadn’t had that option at first, and Branwyn didn’t blame her for choosing the vague path. Howl, faced with the utterly inexplicable right off the bat, would be easier to convince than Branwyn would have been.
She bounded up the rest of the staircase, Howl close behind. It was going to be really embarrassing if the silver courtkey didn’t open the door, she thought.
Fortunately, it did. She waved her arm grandly, making a show of displaying the scene on the other side of the door and how it looked almost exactly as expected. “I'm going to go through the door. When I do, you won't see me on the other side. Now, watch close!” She started crawling through, and only as she felt the curtain part around her did she realize she had nothing but the word of a faerie about where she was going to end up.
-five-
Once again, Branwyn felt the floorboards soften into thick carpets as the wisps of curtain brushed against her face. The light was brighter than she expected, but when she stood up, she recognized Tarn's court. This time she could see clearly the faeries dozing in the corners of the room, and make out the subtle, shimmering patterns of the wall hangings.
Tarn lounged in his chair, reading Penny’s favorite tabloid. He rattled the paper. “Do I look like a Taurus to you?”
Branwyn snorted. “I have n
o idea. Are you?”
“It seems plausible.” He turned a page. “Now, Leo, I can get behind.”
Branwyn thought of three different questions about celestial horoscopes and then decided they were all distractions. “There’s a New Age bookstore a couple of miles from here. Near where I work, in fact. Why don’t you move the door there instead? I’m sure you’d be very, uh, welcome. Whatever my Gran-gran believed, they believe about ten times as much.”
Tarn folded the paper and looked at her. “But I like it here. I can hear your family down below. They make charming neighbors. Are your younger brothers twins?”
“Everybody makes that mistake.” She moved across the piled carpets, watching the way the pattern changed as she stepped on it. Then she looked up at Tarn. He met her gaze calmly. One of his eyes was walnut brown and the other a forest green. They were striking, but they were just eyes, with a faint tracery of lines around them, and the thick lashes of a newborn baby. Just eyes, unlike the monster's.
Branwyn wondered if he actually knew about Severin’s campaign, then decided that if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to just tell him. Information was all she had right now. Besides, she didn’t really like that he was eavesdropping on her family.
He leaned back in his chair, hooking one leg over the arm, as if waiting for something.
She said, “I think I saw one of your friends today. Pretty boy painting pictures on teenagers with just his finger?”
“Is that what you came here for? Real estate recommendations and social gossip?” He raised the tabloid. “It’s not your specialty. By the way, how is your friend Penny?”
“Unconscious.”
“Just like Sleeping Beauty. A pity.” He opened the magazine again.
Branwyn persisted. “So what Courts are the faeries who are able to get out part of? Does that affect their magic?”
Tarn flipped back a few pages, as if the answer was in the tabloid. “Oh yes. In your region, most of them are part of a Duchy known as Nightwell, bound to Air and Stone. I believe Nightwell aspires to be the first truly urban fae.” Though his voice remained light and neutral, his mouth twisted scornfully.
Infinity Key (Senyaza Series Book 2) Page 5