Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  “Bowling alley?”

  “Shut up.” Heather pointed to the empty chair in the room. “Sit.”

  Mason did as she was told.

  “I was really starting to think maybe you were dead in a ditch somewhere or something. I thought they might have gotten you.”

  “What—the draugr?”

  “N … uh, yeah. Them too.” Heather blinked as if she’d been about to say something else, but then she just shook her head, glaring fiercely at Mason. “The freaking headmaster stopped me in the hall today and asked me if there was something up with you lately. And my mom—my mom—mentioned that she’d seen your dad at the club and did I know if you were behaving yourself, because apparently he seemed, and I quote, ‘troubled’ when your name came up.”

  That wasn’t good. Mason was going to have to start being more careful if she wanted to keep seeing Fenn. She looked over to where Heather was still sitting, staring at her. It was obvious that she was pretty pissed. But Mason was secretly pleased—surprised as hell, but pleased—that someone like Heather Palmerston had actually gone to the mat for her.

  “I don’t work this hard when I skip class!” Heather huffed.

  “Heather?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Her eyes glittered fiercely in the lamplight. “And all I can say is, it better have been worth it.”

  Mason couldn’t stop the grin she could feel spreading across her face. It had been so worth it, she thought, remembering the kissing and the moonlight—and conveniently mentally editing out the stabbing part. After a moment of silence, Heather lobbed a throw cushion at her head.

  “Spill it!” Heather yelped suddenly, bounding over from the chair to the bed, where she grabbed another cushion, hugged it, and leaned forward with an expression of anticipation that was just short of salacious. “Details! All of ’em! I know you were with super-bad hot blond. What happened?”

  Mason was shocked to her core to witness the transformation of ice queen Heather Palmerston into—apparently—Mason’s gossip-hungry BFF. But she didn’t sense anything the least bit insincere about it. After all, Heather had spent all day blowing smoke on Mason’s behalf when she could have just ratted her out and the hell with it. Slowly it dawned on Mason that the girl she’d always thought of as the singular creature at the top of the Gosforth food chain might very well be just as lonely and friend starved as Mason herself was. But as she looked at where Heather sat staring at her expectantly, she decided it wasn’t worth risking the moment of connection by psychoanalyzing the situation. Instead, she grabbed the pillow off the floor that Heather had thrown at her and flopped down on the end of the bed, facing the other girl.

  She told her everything that had happened with Fennrys, including the incident at the Boat Basin Café and all that had occurred over the last few hours. Up to and including burying three inches of cold steel in Fenn’s shoulder muscle.

  “Ohmigod, you stabbed him?”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No! I totally would have done that too!” Heather shook her head enthusiastically. “What a great way to get his shirt off. And then you could totally be all ‘oh, baby, does it hurt?’ and sexy-nurse his hot blond hotness.” She leered wickedly.

  Mason stifled a laugh and smacked her with a pillow. “You’re such a perv.”

  “Like you weren’t all breathless and fluttery when it happened.”

  “More like panicking and fainty. There was a lot of blood.” Mason shook her head. “But … then he used that medallion thing—like he did with Cal in the storage room—and healed himself. Almost good as new. Although I’m guessing he’ll carry around another pretty impressive scar to go with all the other ones.”

  “Yeah. I remember those,” Heather said.

  “I figured.” Mason snorted. “I thought you were trying to commit them all to memory, the way you were staring at him.”

  “It’s how I cope with unmitigated terror.” Heather shrugged. “I still wonder where he got them, though.” She leaned back against the wall and cast a sideways glance at Mason. “He doesn’t remember anything?”

  Mason shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Wow. That’s weird, Starling.”

  “No, Heather. What’s weird is that he appeared in the middle of a storm and saved us from monsters,” Mason said drily. “That was weird. Everything else that’s happened since then? I’m just kinda going with it.”

  “Have you kissed him yet?”

  “Heather!”

  “Are you gonna kiss him again?”

  Mason felt herself blushing a deep crimson. But she smiled at Heather and said, “Every single chance I get.”

  Just outside Mason’s room, Rory felt the skin on his hand and arm go from fever warm to ice-cold as he lifted his fingertips away from the polished wooden surface of the door. The instant he did so, the voices of the two girls on the other side became muffled and indistinct once again. He opened his other hand and glanced down at the tiny golden acorn in his palm. The bright glow of the rune carved on its surface dimmed as he watched, and Rory pocketed it.

  He hated using the precious store of stolen magicks unless it was something important or—as in the case of the performance-enhancing charms he’d crafted and supplied to Taggert Overlea and some of the other guys on the varsity football team—extremely profitable. But when he’d passed by his sister’s dorm room, shortcutting to the kitchen to pilfer an after-hours snack, and heard voices coming from behind her door, Rory had acted on a hunch.

  After all, eavesdropping had always served him well in the past.

  Drawing a tiny bit of magick from the rune-inscribed acorn, he’d augmented his own senses and listened … and every word that passed between Mason and Heather had come to him through the thick oak door with crystal clarity. His hunch had proved to be a damned good one.

  Shaking the tingling chill from his hand, Rory turned on his heel and ran swiftly back down the hallway before anyone caught him lurking. He was extremely pleased with himself—that was one bout of eavesdropping that would pay off handsomely. And fulfilling Gunnar’s plan just got a whole lot easier. Rory and Roth would no longer have to scour the entire city looking for one guy. Not when their very own baby sister had just admitted to indulging in regular make-out sessions with him.

  “Holy hell.” Rory chuckled as he made his way back to his own quarters in the adjacent wing of the old stone building. “Mouse has got the hots for Mister Hero.”

  He could hardly believe his luck. Moreover, if this Fennrys guy felt the same way about Mason—and from the sounds of things, he did—even better. Because if that was the case, when the time came, they wouldn’t have to threaten him to get him to cross the Hell Gate Bridge.

  They’d just have to threaten Mason.

  XXV

  For the next few days, late evenings were the time that Fennrys looked forward to the most. Because of Mason. They continued their sparring matches—using the after-hours High Line as their own personal piste—and Fenn refused to let Mason bring her practice blades to work with. He wouldn’t know what to do with one of the whippy little things in the first place, but more importantly, he didn’t want her to be afraid of the larger, sharper blade. He didn’t want her to be afraid of hurting him again, and he definitely wanted to get her past her fear of the draugr.

  There was also the added bonus that, once she got used to the greater weight and heft of the swept-hilt he’d given her, when she went back to the competition saber, it would be featherlight and effortless in her grip. It had been working, too, she’d told him by the end of the week. Her daytime practices had seen a marked improvement in her already impressive talents, and she seemed to be moving past her phobic responses. Apparently the change was dramatic enough that Mason seemed to think Toby might be on the verge of asking her if she was taking performance enhancers.

  But it wasn’t just the sparring that Fennrys looked forward to. It was th
e deeper joy of just spending time with the raven-haired girl, finding things to say that would make her laugh. Feeling himself smile in return. Strolling the High Line with her, sitting in the galleries that had been built into the sections of track that passed through surrounding buildings and hiding from the occasional security guard, Fennrys would hold Mason’s hand as gently as if it were made of glass, even though he could feel the raw strength in the muscles and sinews under her smooth skin.

  For those few nights, the High Line was their own private paradise. A ribbon of green and silver surrounded by the sparkling lights of the New York City night, it floated above the hum of the street life below. Canopied over with stars—when the sky wasn’t tumbled with clouds, which seemed more nights than not these days—and Fennrys would even, if his timing was just right, steal the odd, rare kiss.

  But that in itself was something that he approached as if it was a precious, gifted opportunity not to be taken lightly, or advantage of. Mason was special. And he didn’t want to do anything to pressure her or make her wary of him. In the back of his mind, Fennrys had the strange, nagging sensation that he’d done that once before. With someone else special. He had the feeling that it hadn’t worked out so well.

  He had the feeling that a lot of things hadn’t worked out so well in the life he couldn’t remember.

  As the days passed, he grew determined to find out who—and what—he was. If only because that was the only way he would ever let any kind of relationship develop further between him and Mason Starling. She was far too special to let anything happen to threaten her. Even if—maybe especially if—that something was him.

  So he took it slow.

  Evenings on the High Line. Nights full of dreams.

  And daytimes he spent roaming the city, restlessly trying to find clues as to his own buried identity, mostly with little success. This city was his city. He knew that. Knew he’d spent significant time there. But nothing was quite how he … he couldn’t exactly say “remembered” it. “Perceived” it, maybe, was the way to put it. It was as if there was a strange multilayered patina clinging to the places that were familiar to him. Like the way he’d told Mason that he could remember when London Terrace wasn’t there. He could. He was sure of it.

  One afternoon it finally occurred to him to investigate the only tangible thing he’d managed to tie back to his former life: the loft apartment in the anonymous, seemingly abandoned warehouse. He knew for certain that the place was his, that he lived there—but he had no way of knowing who actually owned the property. If he was paying rent to someone, Fennrys was pretty sure there would be a record of ownership somewhere. A land title maybe. Something. Some clue.

  There were no signs that he had found anywhere on or in the building itself that indicated ownership. But there had to be municipal records. If there were, however, the clerk at the records office couldn’t find them. And nudged perhaps by the same kind of persuasive force that Fennrys had unintentionally used on the waiter at the Boat Basin Café a few days earlier, she’d happily spent almost two hours looking.

  Frustrated, Fenn returned home. It was on his way up in the freight elevator that he finally caught his first tiny break.

  There was a mechanical certificate behind a sheet of glass bolted above the operator panel. It was so yellowed and faded with age that Fennrys hadn’t even noticed it up to that point, and even when he peered closely, he couldn’t really make out any of the words. But it was folded in half, and there was a possibility, he thought, that some bit of information on the bottom half had escaped weathering. He had no tools to unscrew the frame holding the thing to the elevator wall, so he wrapped his fist in the sleeve of his jacket and punched it, hard enough to break the glass. He worked the brittle certificate out of the frame and carried it into his living area and over to one of the windows. The typeface was ancient, from an old manual typewriter, and in the space left for Owner/Proprietor, it read “Vinterkongen Holdings.” Fennrys stared at the words for a long time. They didn’t exactly set any bells ringing in his head.

  “Okay then,” he murmured finally. “Let’s see if we can’t get a line on you, Mr. Vinterkongen. If that’s even a real name …”

  Fennrys figured the easiest way to access information like that would be at the New York Public Library. The day was bright as he headed toward the subway station at Twenty-third so he could make his way to Forty-second Street and then across to Fifth Avenue, where the two massive marble lions sat flanking the wide stone steps that led up to the terrace at the front of the main branch of the library.

  Fennrys walked up the steps, staring at the impressive edifice in front of him. He wondered if he’d ever been there before. In some ways, it felt a little like walking into the hall of a great and powerful king, and that sensation was a strangely familiar one.

  “Damn. Maybe you really are some kind of amnesiac son of a rock star,” he muttered to himself. “Or maybe black-sheep royalty.”

  Fennrys stalked the halls until he found a reading room with public-access computer terminals. He discovered a few interesting things over the next hour and a half: among them that he couldn’t type, didn’t like reading off a computer screen, and found the mouse awkward to use.

  “So … probably not a super spy, then. Or an office clerk.” He sighed. “That narrows it down nicely.”

  Another thing, once he eventually got the hang of using the library’s search interface, was that whoever it was that owned the building his loft was in had a fairly impressive portfolio of real estate holdings in and around the New York area. Besides his own outwardly dilapidated/inwardly tricked-out place, there was also an apartment on Central Park West, a turn-of-the-century music hall in the theater district, and at least a dozen other properties on the island of Manhattan itself. He found very little other information about this Vinterkongen person—if they were even a person—but where it got really interesting, not to say worrying, was when he was searching through references to old land deeds and genealogy records and stumbled across a record of a land property transfer from the early 1800s. The deal was between two parties listed as Vinterkongen and Sturlungar, an ancient family that had its origins in the Icelandic Commonwealth. A further search indicated that Sturlungar was an earlier rendering of a familial name. The more modern version of which was … Starling.

  “What does your family have to do with my mystery landlord, Mason?” Fennrys murmured as he pushed his chair back and stared at the screen. “And just how much trouble are the two of us really in?”

  Before he left the library, he did a search on two more terms: Iris and Lethe—the names he remembered the hooded woman saying in his dreams, after Mason had stabbed him. Iris, it turned out, according to Greek mythology, was a winged messenger of the gods, a kind of link between mortals and immortals, and a personification of the rainbow, which was also how she traveled between realms. According to several sources, she was known to spend time in the underworld. Lethe was the name of a river in that mythological underworld—and its waters induced forgetfulness in those who swam in them or drank from them.

  Fennrys sat there, turning the information over in his mind, applying this new knowledge to the dream.

  “It was just a dream,” he murmured to himself.

  But if it was … why then did he remember seeing a winged woman hovering above the fallen oak in the Gosforth gym, just after he’d crashed through a rainbow-colored window … with no memory of who or what he was? Why would a goddess—an ostensibly Greek goddess, at that—have taken an interest in him? Who was the cloaked woman who’d released him from imprisonment and led him to her? And exactly where in hell had he been?

  That last question echoed just a little too loudly in his head.

  Where in hell had he been?

  An hour later, Fennrys sat outside on one of the many green folding chairs provided for the patrons of Bryant Park, staring up into a bright blue sky with unseeing eyes. No one gave him a second look—except for one grizzled old
man in a shabby overcoat, with a ragged teddy bear stuffed under one arm, who happened to do a double take as he passed by. Fenn looked up when he noticed the man had stopped and wondered if he was going to ask for money or cigarettes.

  He asked for neither and just said, “Oh. Hey.”

  Fennrys nodded silently at him.

  “I ain’t gonna have to pack up and move to another park again now, am I?” the man asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Well, it’s just that, last time I saw you, it was up in Central Park. Right around the time that little lady friend of yours told me to pull up stakes.” He shrugged a bulky shoulder. “She told me the park wasn’t safe. Nasty things there. Eat your face and all.”

  Fennrys felt suddenly cold—as though a cloud had passed over the sun. “What lady friend would that be?”

  “The princess, o’ course.”

  A princess, Fennrys thought. Right. He tried to shake off the momentary sense of unease and smiled at the man indulgently.

  “I been down here ever since,” the man was saying. “I like parks.” He peered at Fennrys. “You like parks, too, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Fennrys eyed the man warily. “I like parks fine, I guess.” Except that even the thought of Central Park made him extremely uneasy. He stood. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about, buddy.”

  The old man shrugged again and grinned. “You wouldn’t be the first to tell me that. How’ve you been?”

  “Do you … know me?” Fennrys asked.

  “Don’t exactly know you,” he said. “Just seen ya around once in a while. Over the years. Up in Central Park. You and … them. The shiny ones.”

  “What shiny ones would those be, exactly?” Fennrys asked.

  But the man shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. No, no … I don’t think I’m really supposed to talk about it.” The man held up his stuffed bear—it was missing one of its button eyes—and said, “But you can ask the Major. The Major knows all about that stuff.”