by H A Titus
Whatever it was, I didn't care to find out the truth today.
Gren leaned against the barrier beside me and crossed his arms over his chest. "Let's cut the small talk."
"Suits me."
"I'm here to discuss your hunt for relics."
"I thought that might be it." Relics, or specifically pathstones? I guess I'd have to listen to find out. I relaxed my stance but didn't drop my hand from my knife. "So that's why you've been following me." I glanced over at the café and noticed that Cori was now sitting in the booth beside the girl, and Josh seemed really intent on what they were both saying.
"So you noticed," Gren said.
"Of course I noticed."
He accepted the snark with a nod. "But you didn't tell your human buddy."
I frowned. Of course I hadn't told Josh. He was already amped up enough—telling him that we were being followed would've made him more nervous. But Gren couldn't know that for sure. "So who's the girl?"
"Our sister."
I raised an eyebrow. "Whoever's yanking your chain sent three of you against one human and one fae? Paranoid much?"
Gren shrugged. "He wanted to get the message across clearly."
"Okay, and what's that?"
"We know about your work with the curators. Hunting down and destroying relics." Gren looked him in the eye. "We know about Emily and Iain."
Those two names set instant knots in my gut. I had to fight to keep my hands unclenched. "Everyone knows about that," I snapped. "That's supposed to be a threat? To scare me off?" Ice trickled down my spine. Did he knew my true purpose for hunting down relics?
Gren glanced over to the café. "Wouldn't want a repeat of that mess."
A chill rolled over my face and neck, followed immediately by a hot flush of rage. They were threatening Josh.
My phone dinged in my pocket, the special three-chirp tone I'd set for Josh. I glanced at the screen. Need to talk.
"Ah, looks like my siblings are done talking sense into your partner," Gren said amiably.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket.
"So what'll it be, Eliaster Tyrone?" Gren asked. "As you prepared to listen to reason?"
I snorted. "Have you heard anything about me?"
Faster than I could duck, Gren grabbed the front of my shirt and slammed me into one of the parking garage's support columns. "Ready to listen now?" he growled.
I grabbed at his wrists, tried to pry his hands free. When that didn't work, I tried to drop my hands and go for the knives under my jacket.
But my hands stayed fixed in place.
I ducked my chin so I could see what was going on. Flicking flames of yellow-green glamour wound around my wrists and hands, pinning my fingers in place against Gren's arms. A slight electric buzz ran along the backs of my hands, making the hair on my arms stand on end. My vision narrowed, and I fought the sudden panic that surged through me like a live wire. The last time I'd seen this much glamour, it had been from a crazy Unseelie witch trying to kill me.
I gasped. Spread my fingers and tried to pull glamour into my own hands. Tried to sear away the fire wrapping my fingers. A burning warmth spread over the backs of my hands and arms. Faint blue flame flickered from between my fingers and then died.
Gren laughed, a sharp staccato sound. "That's pathetic."
I looked up, gritting my teeth, and started. Gren had changed. His skin had been clear, but now I could see the glowing tattoos on his cheeks and brow, down each side of his neck, poking from the hems of his shirt sleeves. I could've sworn that he hadn't had tattoos before … had he been hiding them with glamour?
I drove my knee into his gut.
Gren's smile turned into a pained expression, and he gasped out a short breath. The cords on my wrists vanished. I twisted free of his hands and swung, hard, at his face.
He dodged and my knuckles slammed into the concrete wall. I swore and turned, swinging again with my other hand.
He grabbed the collar of my jacket and threw me backward into the parking garage. I curled up, wrapping my arms around my head. I hit the concrete floor hard on one shoulder and rolled several times before I could stop myself. I looked up. He'd thrown me close to ten feet away from the entrance. I swallowed, clenched my hands. He was a lot stronger than I'd thought.
Gren stepped into the garage. Here, in the darker space, I could see the threads of yellow glamour misting from his fingers.
I staggered to my feet and drew my knife. Crap. Stupid idea to stay and fight—with that much glamour, he could easily give me a beating. But if I ran, he'd hit me in the back with glamor, then step in to finish the job with his fists. Either way, I was probably getting some bruises and maybe a broken bone or two. My shoulder twinged.
Gren leaned across the doorway, blocking the nearest exit, and crossed his arms. "I'm serious. Stay out of this. You can chase the Lucht Leanuna to your heart's content, but stay away from the relics. You hear?"
"Do you really think that's going to stop me?"
"No. But you're setting Josh up, if you're not careful." He smirked. "And I don't think you want any more blood on your hands."
The words sucker punched me hard. I clenched my free hand. "He can take care of himself." But he couldn't. I knew that, and I saw in Gren's expression that he knew it as well.
"Fine, whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night." Gren started to turn away, then said over his shoulder, "And for Danaan's sake, get yourself a focus tattoo. The next time I see you, I actually want this to be a fair fight."
I waited until he was out of sight before I collapsed onto my knees, hands shaking as I sheathed my knife. My mind spun. What danger to address first? The threat against Josh, the control over glamour that I'd never seen before in my life … What's a focus tattoo? I stood, brushing my hands against my jeans. My left hand throbbed with the movement. I winced, glanced down. Blood dripped from my knuckles. I flattened my right hand against the ground in an effort to steady myself.
Out of all the sidhé I'd ever met, I was pretty sure that Gren scared me the most.
Josh came around the corner of the parking garage, head up, eyes scanning the interior of the place as they adjusted to the dimness. He smiled when he first saw me, but the smile quickly faded as his eyes widened. "What happened to your hand?"
I glanced down at my hand. "I left some skin on the wall."
"Who were you fighting? Did Llew show up again?"
"Might be worse than Llew," I said quietly.
Josh's face went white, and I realized my mistake.
"Not Larae," I clarified. I walked toward the sidewalk, massaging my hand. "Let's talk when we get home."
# # #
Josh was weirdly quiet on the way back to the rath. I glanced over at him once or twice. He kept his head ducked down, his eyes on his phone, and his thumbs tapping away like mad on the tiny touch screen. Something had clicked in his techno-brain; I could tell by his intense focus on whatever it was he was doing.
What had happened in the café? Who was the fae girl I'd seen sitting beside Coriander?
Gren had said our sister. So the Airgead brothers had a sister.
Strange how, after pushing people away for so long, I'd gotten attached to this weird human in such a short time. I'd always wanted to protect humans from other fae—that was part of what had driven me to working with the curators and seeking out relics in the first place.
Josh made me think of some of the curators I'd worked with. Sharp as a new dagger, adaptable, but still somehow clueless at times.
As we parked, got out of the car, and headed up the steps of my father's rath, Josh suddenly looked up from his phone. "What can you tell me about the rule of three?" he asked.
I blinked. Hadn't been expecting that question. "The, uh … huh. Haven't heard that for a long time."
"So what is it?" Josh learned forward. His eyebrows rose just a touch, and he grinned.
"It's an old sidhé thing. You know how our eye colors fluct
uate with our emotions? The d'anam fuienneog?" I barely wait for his nod before continuing. "That makes it easy to guess emotions. Makes it difficult to lie, but we still can. So our ancestors found a way to bind all the fae with the rule of three—when a fae repeats something three times, it must be true. Otherwise …" I trailed off. Truth was, I didn't really know what would happen if a fae tried to lie and invoke the rule of three. "It's a holy number. Fae are pretty suspicious regarding anything holy."
Josh nodded. "I'll see if Roe has any ideas."
"Good plan. She'll know more than me." I paused on the steps of the rath. Where had he heard that? "Why'd you ask?"
"Aileen—she's an Airgead, Coriander's older sister—invoked it when I met with them."
I raised an eyebrow. "What'd she say when she invoked it?"
"She just used it to swear that everything she'd told me was true." Josh pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "She swore by the Allfather and the angels."
I made a skeptical noise.
"I think it was the real deal, Eliaster. I felt this … shock or something when she took my hand, and I saw the glamour when she said it."
Since when had he been able to see glamour? I rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, while you were chumming around with the nice siblings, I got to visit with Gren Airgead."
"The one with the pocket watches?" Josh's face scrunched and he shrank back. "You got into a fight with him?"
"Sort of. But what's more important is that he warned me off. Said Cori and Aileen were doing the same to you."
"Funny way of warning me off." Josh chuckled.
I smirked, but didn't laugh. "So what happened, if they weren't telling you to stop hunting down relics?"
He pocketed his phone, still smiling a bit. "You ever heard the name Galen Shaughnessy?"
I shook my head. "Should I have?"
"Cori and Aileen said he's a relic runner who lives in Kansas City. They wouldn't give me much—they acted really scared about something—but they said that if we found Shaughnessy, we'd find a trail to a pathstone."
Vague promises, using the one thing we really wanted as bait … yeah, this didn't have any red flags at all. "Sounds like a trap."
"That's what I said, and I pressed them for more info. They seemed really scared about something. Aileen said that she'd been sent to Springfield to keep an eye on us, and that Cori wasn't supposed to be there at all, but that they were taking a chance and sharing this info in good faith."
"Did they want something in return?"
"I guess? I don't know, they didn't outright say anything."
I grunted. "So they were just sharing this out of the goodness of their hearts?"
"C'mon, Eliaster, what's it gonna take for you to trust them?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe their brother not threatening the life of my friend?" I snapped. "My human friend who can't defend himself as well? Who still lives aboveground? Who now trusts the siblings of the guy who threatened him?"
Josh stared at me, wide eyed. "What?"
"Gren threatened your life, Josh. You really think I'm going to believe what Aileen and Cori say now? Like I said, this is some kind of trap. I bet they're working for Blodheyr. Gren sure seemed okay with the idea of killing you to get me to shut up."
Josh's shoulders hunched. "Then why go to all this trouble? Why not just gank me right then? Why try to draw us into some big conspiracy about curators and relic runners?"
His questions were making too much sense. Way too much sense—and I didn't want to hear it. Not right now. My hands trembled. I shoved them into my pockets.
Josh sighed in frustration. "Well fine then. I guess we'll ignore this lead, that's the only info we've found in months mind you, to play it safe."
I rolled my eyes, then turned and jogged down the steps before I smacked the snot out of him. "I'll be in the garage." That was probably a lie. I needed to talk to Angel, see if he'd heard any rumors about Blaise's death. If Josh didn't come chasing after me in a few minutes I'd go track Angel down.
"Great. Awesome," Josh said sarcastically. "I guess I'll see you later. Maybe."
The maybe stung, but I gritted my teeth and kept walking. He might not like it, but this was to protect him.
CHAPTER 6
JOSH
I didn't stay at the rath long that night. I tried working on the computer stuff Cormac had shown me, but Eliaster's flippant dismissal of the information we'd gotten from the Airgeads grated on my nerves. I quit after about an hour of work and headed to my family's house aboveground.
By the time I got home, everyone else was asleep, so I went straight up to my room and collapsed on my bed. I turned on a TV show on my laptop, but soon my mind drifted from the problems of five robot pilots to my own issues.
Even though I was tired, my nerves felt like they were on fire. I felt ready to jump out of my skin, and my hands kept twitching of their own accord. It had been like this at night ever since I'd recovered from the trip to the Chicago Underworld.
I finally fell asleep, an almost physical weight dragging my limbs to stillness.
And I awoke to silence. The house was dark, silent. Moonlight filtered through my window. My computer had gone into sleep mode, so I must've been out for a while. I got up and tapped the mousepad to check the time. 2:30 AM. I walked over to the window and glanced out. Hadn't the curtains been closed when I'd fallen asleep?
My stomach sank. We'd been about to go into a new moon, but the one I saw from my window was full. And it had been shining on me as I'd slept. In ancient Gaelic mythology, that was a sign that I wouldn't live out the year. I swallowed hard and backed away, yanking my curtain shut. As I did so, the moonlight caught my right wrist, and I gasped in shock. The black scar that had been left as a mark of Larae's dark glamour had expanded. Like a thick, dark cuff, it wrapped fully around my wrist and extended a couple of inches up my arm. I could move my fingers, but I no longer felt my hand.
A jab of pain shot into my left wrist. I looked over and gasped again as the metal bracelet on my left wrist dug into the flesh, cutting deep lines of red that trickled down my hand and dripped onto the floor. The smell of iron—fresh blood—rose to my nostrils, and I gagged. The bracelet compressed again, and I dropped to my knees, screaming.
Glowing vines shot from the ground and lashed around me, pinning my arms to my sides. More crawled up my face, filled my nose and my mouth. I thrashed and screamed, but no sound came out. I could feel the vines snaking down my throat, and I started heaving, choking.
Wake up! I screamed at myself. This is a dream! Wake up!
More vines dug into my chest, and the cold, misty tendrils curled around my heart. They squeezed. I doubled over, screaming soundlessly, tears dripping down my face. I took another deep breath, felt the vines expand with my chest, and wrenched my arms together in front of my body. As soon as I screamed again, the vines tightened, but my fingertips were touching. I caught the web of my left hand between my fingernails and pinched. Compared to the rest of the pain wracking my body, it was nothing.
Inconsequential.
But it was just enough.
I felt like I'd been physically slammed back onto my bed. I bolted upright, patting my chest, my mouth. No vines. Daylight streamed in around the edges of my closed curtains. I checked my wrists. The scar was still there, a thin line of darkness on the underside of my wrist, and the metal bracelet was still on my left, fitting just as snugly as it had been before.
I tried to push it off.
It wouldn't fit over the base of my thumb.
My heart leapt into my mouth, and I pushed on it again. The edge dug into my wrist, and a thin line of red trickled down my hand. Just like the dream.
I stopped, dread making my stomach turn. What if blood triggered it? Would it crush my wrist like it had in the dream?
My blood dripped down onto the jeans I still wore from yesterday, but the bracelet did nothing. I was finally able to slide it over the widest part of my hand
, and I threw it on the ground next to the bed. It landed with a dull thump. I slumped back on the pillows and rubbed my face, sobbing. It had just been a dream. A dream. That was all. Just a dream.
I laid still for a few minutes, breathing hard, my hands over my eyes. I hadn't had a nightmare that bad since the first time I'd dreamt about killing David.
Someone knocked on my door. "Josh?"
Mom. I got up and opened the door, dragging my fingers through my hair.
She smiled. "Sleepy today? You're usually up and out the door so fast we can't even eat breakfast together."
"Yeah. Yeah, I...I crashed pretty hard last night." My stomach growled, and I remembered I'd been so nervous about meeting Cori and Aileen that I'd skipped dinner last night.
Mom laughed and motioned downstairs. "I'm going to go drag the twins out of bed."
Okay, so they were all still here, so it had to be fairly early. Their school started at 8, and the bus came by at 7:30. I shut the door and gathered everything I'd need for the day. I snatched up the bracelet and turned it over in my hands. When Roe had given it to me, after Marc died, she'd only said it was an old family heirloom, that Marc would've wanted me to have it, that his sisters and mom had given their blessing for it to be passed on to me. Roe wouldn't have given the bracelet to me if she knew it would terrorize me.
At least, I hoped not.
I shook my head. That was a stupid thought.
Why now? Why hadn't I gotten bad dreams from the first night I started wearing it? I'd have to talk to Roe, see what she thought of this new turn of events.
After making sure my wrist had stopped bleeding, I changed into a new T-shirt and jeans, crumpling the bloodstained clothes into the bottom of the laundry basket. I grabbed my backpack and shoved the bracelet into my pocket. As I stepped down the stairs and into the kitchen, my phone rang. I glanced down at the screen. Eliaster.