Agent of Enchantment (Dark Fae FBI Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  Each stroke of his fingertips distracted me, so I could hardly focus on the task at hand. I moved in closer, relishing the feel of his powerful body moving against mine. “And what else?”

  He bent down, his breath warming my throat. “You’re beautiful, Cassandra. But it’s best if I keep you out of it.”

  A tall, violet-haired beauty tapped on Roan’s shoulder. “Taranis. I would like this dance.”

  He stiffened. “I’ll dance with you later, Liliana. I’m occupied at the moment.”

  Even beneath Liliana’s mask, I could see her cheeks redden. “I hardly ever see you at the dances. And when I do, you won’t deign to dance with me?” She sounded pissed.

  Well, this was awkward.

  “Next time,” Roan said firmly. “I promise.”

  Lilliana turned her gaze on me. “And who is this little thing?” Before I could stop her, she ripped the mask from my face.

  Roan’s hand flew out to stop her, but the damage had been done.

  “Is this the mongrel who came through here earlier?” she shouted. “You’re passing me over for a filthy Lilive? She should be enslaved!”

  Around me, the dancers stopped twirling, and murmurs echoed through the room.

  Gasps and titters erupted around me.

  “Let’s go.” Roan grabbed my hand, pulling me from the hall in a sprint for the exit.

  At last, we rushed out into the cool night air, onto a balcony that overlooked a twinkling city. He led me down a set of stone steps, overgrown with vines.

  “What is going on?” I demanded.

  I pulled him to a halt below a rowan tree, its boughs strung with shimmering silver lanterns.

  He glanced back at the hall, searching to see if anyone was following, and then tried to pull me again. I stood my ground.

  “What do they want with me?” I asked, my voice sharp. “What is a Lilive? Why did that woman think I should be enslaved?”

  He looked at me impatiently, and I met his stare. He waited, listening intently. When he was satisfied we were alone, that no one was pursuing us, he met my gaze. “There are names for people like you, and none of them particularly nice. Three-born, Lilive, fortal, mongrel. They’re all names for pixies.”

  Okay. This was stupid. “Um, I’m not a pixie. My parents were both human.”

  “No, they weren’t. Pixies are born from the unholy union of a human and a fae.”

  I swallowed hard. “I don’t see how that’s possible. Granted, my father was…” A fucking monster, like all you people. I let the thought die on my tongue. “But trust me. Neither of my parents looked like the fae in there.”

  “Mmm. And how do you explain that you feed off fear?”

  “Are you saying I do that because I’m a pixie?”

  “Not all pixies feed off fear. Despite what my fae brethren call pixies, I have no problem with your species. The reason I don’t trust you is that you’re a terror leech, born from the worst sort of fae. The bringers of doom, my ancient enemies.”

  My stomach swooped. “Great,” I muttered, half-dazed.

  “And I think you also have some magical skills of your own? Perhaps you’ve noticed that most humans don’t have that?”

  The world seemed to waver beneath my feet, and a memory hit me.

  The blood test when I was six years old, the doctor telling my mom that something was wrong with the results—that my blood was irregular. There was no iron in it, he said. It must be a severe iron deficiency. They gave me iron supplements, thinking I had a bad case of anemia. And then I got really sick, and nearly died. My mother refused to take me to a doctor ever again. Was it true that iron hurt fairies?

  I swallowed hard as the terrible idea took root in my mind. My father—the monster—was a fae. A true demon.

  Panic gripped my chest, and my breathing shallowed.

  Roan grabbed my shoulders. “Whatever you’re doing, you have to stop,” he urged. “Your feelings are overwhelming my aura. If you keep this up, they’ll all come running out of the hall.”

  My blood pounded in my ears. My knees nearly gave way, and Roan slipped an arm around my waist to steady me.

  I stared at him. I needed to get a grip if I was going to get through this fucking night alive. Whatever I’d just heard, I needed to lock up that knowledge and keep my head on straight. With all the control I could muster, I shoved this new knowledge into the dark depths of my mental vault, and locked it. I would have to face it later, but right now, I needed to have my wits about me. I took several deep breaths, calming down, then straightened.

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard. I wanted to get the fuck out of here as fast as I could. And I didn’t trust Roan. “Give me a second.”

  With a racing pulse, I pulled off the cuff, looping it around a tree branch. I felt for its reflection, letting it become a part of me, imagining it in my hotel room. The reflection shimmered, and I fell into it, a liquid coolness rush over my skin.

  And yet, halfway through I felt the air around me thicken, knotting around me, an impenetrable wall. I was knocked back onto the stone steps with Roan, my back smacking on a stair.

  He stared down at me, arms crossed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Reflection magic was new to me, but what had just happened felt as if my body had rebelled against me, as if my hand had suddenly clenched into a fist and smashed me in the nose. The reflection was part of me—it should have worked. My head spun.

  “Trinovantum is easy enough to enter. Not so easy to leave, even with your reflection powers. You can only leave though a portal.”

  How did he know about my reflection powers? Then I realized—the night I had watched him through the mirror. He had seen me as well. He knew how I got here all along, and now knew that I had tried to leave and failed. Damn it! Was he telling the truth about portals?

  I rose, my legs shaking. I couldn’t process it right now; I needed to keep a clear head. “Okay. Can you take me to a portal?”

  “Of course. Right after you help me.”

  I blinked. So much was strange around me, but one piece of the puzzle instantly became very clear. “That’s why you’ve been helping me, right? You need something from me.”

  “Of course.” He shrugged. “Why else?”

  Chapter 20

  Roan had called the fae world a mirror realm, and in a way, it was true. A warped mirror, reflecting our own world. As we walked through the city, I had the strangest sense of walking through a world at once foreign and familiar, and the sensation made my pulse race. Did it look familiar to me because my father had come here, the memories passed on to me through his tainted blood? It didn’t look like a city for monsters. It was oddly beautiful, in fact.

  Pearly spires towered over winding roads, and between them, fae walked on footbridges that arched high above us. Morning glory, trumpet vines, and ivy climbed gleaming marble walls, and gold cornices glinted in the moonlight. Birdsong surrounded us—nightingales, maybe? Cobbled streets veered in erratic paths that evoked London’s patterns. Temples, overgrown with vines, stood in the place of churches in the human realm.

  Half of me wanted to stay here for a month, just taking it all in. The other half wanted to get the hell back to the human realm, fresh with everything I’d learned about fae culture.

  As long as I could block out that disturbing, uncomfortable thought that I might possibly belong here. Lock it all up in your cage, Cassandra.

  On our journey through the city streets, Roan marched fast. Every few minutes, he’d stop and turn to me while he waited, frowning the whole time.

  “Why didn’t we take a horse or something?” I asked.

  “I only have one. And I had no idea you’d be this slow.” As we passed a fountain—some sort of nymph spewing water into a basin—he turned to glare at me. “Do you always walk at this pace?”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re over a foot taller than me. You need me, right? You’ll just have to walk at my pace.”

  I didn’t
like knowing that I was at his mercy here, dependent on his ability to mask my aura. Whenever distance grew between us, I began noticing heads turning, fae frowning as soon as they sensed my mongrel emotions. Even if I decided to make a run for it, I didn’t know where the damn portal was, or how to use it.

  Nearby, a nightingale trilled, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. As much as I was trying to block the thoughts about my father, the mental stress was slowly overwhelming me. It didn’t help that I was dependent on a lethal fae who seemed to have an anger management problem.

  I couldn’t let myself be controlled. I had to grab back the control. He clearly needed me for something, and that meant I’d live—for now. As soon as I could find out where the portal was, I’d get the fuck out of Dodge.

  But as we got to a great wall surrounding the city, dread snaked up my spine. He was taking me out of the city, into the wilderness. Tentatively, I followed him under an arched city gate, its surface covered by curling silver branches. As soon as we’d passed through, I touched his arm. “Can I have my bag back now?”

  He glanced down at his leather belt with a touch of disdain, then pulled the bag free. “What’s so important in this?”

  “Just give it to me.” I snatched it from his hand. I didn’t need to warn him that I’d been thinking about shoving my pen into his eye socket if I needed to defend myself.

  “Fine.” He turned, walking on.

  Here, outside the city walls, grassy fields gave way to a forest in front of us. As soon as we’d left the city, the stars seemed to burn brighter, and the air hung thick with the smell of moss and wildflowers. We walked down a winding dirt path that led to a forest.

  I took a deep breath. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “I need your skills. Your ability with reflections.”

  “For what?”

  He didn’t bother answering, and we returned to silence, the only noise the crunching of our feet over the gravel. Not for the first time that day, I thanked my lucky stars that I’d chosen to wear flats with my skirt. Even so, my feet ached in the thin-soled shoes, but if I’d worn heels, I’d probably have been begging Roan for a piggy-back ride by now.

  As we reached the forest’s edge, the hair rose on the back of my neck. It didn’t look like a welcoming environment. Here the air thinned, and goosebumps rose on my skin.

  We walked deep into the forest, gnarled boughs arching over us. Between them, I caught glimpses of large black birds soaring beneath the moon. I hugged myself tightly. The dirt path snaked through the trees. All around me, shadows seemed to flit between the ancient oaks. Moonlight filtered through oak branches, dancing on the ground like a living thing, sparking off frost and snowflakes.

  Was it my imagination, or was there something sinister about the crooked twists of the tree branches? The further we moved into the woods, the colder the air grew.

  Just as my eyelids were beginning to droop, an oily movement caught my attention. From a shadow beneath an oak, a figure emerged, and the sight of her tightened my chest with dread. Instinctively, I reached for the pen in my bag, staring at a crone with one good eye and hair the color of winter frost, her skin a midnight blue.

  Okay, it was just an old woman with blue skin and a crooked ice tiara resting on her head like a demented Elsa. No reason to panic.

  Roan paused, stepping in front of me protectively, his body tense. “Queen of Winter. We are passing through.”

  She grinned, her teeth the color of rust, and my stomach dropped. “Don’t you want to know your fates?”

  Her low voice sent a chill up my spine. Instinctively, I took a step back.

  “Not this time, Queen,” said Roan.

  She narrowed her one good eye, and pointed a long rusty claw at me. “A pixie. With darkness in her mind. This one likes terror.”

  My mouth went dry. “That’s not true.”

  In the next moment, she was lunging for me, shoving me against an oak. “The key, here!” she screeched, her cries rumbling through my gut, her eyes flashing with icy light. “The key walks through the Hawkwood Forest!”

  Her voice rattled around my mind, and my vision darkened. Deep in the darkest recesses of my mind, my wildest thoughts began to rattle at the bars of their cages. My mother’s screams, the thrill of other people’s terror. The darkness inside me, so powerful it could swallow the world. The power of fae running through my veins, giving me strange powers. And now I knew what I was: I was a monster. Terror tore at me from the inside out.

  Chapter 21

  When my vision cleared again, Roan was by my side, gently prying the old woman from me, unwrapping her fingers from my shoulders. “Thank you, Queen, for your prophecy.”

  Shaking, I tried to gather my thoughts, clamping them down in their cages again. Dwelling on the past was death.

  I watched Roan pull the crone away from me, surprised at both the way he handled her and how she seemed to calm at his touch. With his arm firmly on her back, she looked like a harmless old woman, lost in the woods. She stumbled away from us, mumbling to herself, and wandered into the shadows.

  Roan turned to me. “Are you okay?”

  I swallowed hard, nodding. “Who is she?”

  “The Callach. Queen of Winter. An elder fae.”

  “And she’s crazy, I take it.”

  “She’s a prophetess.”

  I nodded dumbly. Of course she was.

  He turned, stalking off into the woods. “You look tired. We should hurry.”

  As we walked on, the air grew colder still. My legs ached, and shivers wracked my body. I was basically half naked here, in just a sheer dress with no underwear. Moreover, I’d been awake all night, after two brutal fights and a race through London in my little flats. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. My identity had been shattered, and I was lost in another world. Damn right, I was tired. I wanted to curl up in a ball and give up for a while.

  I blinked, fighting to keep awake. All the adrenaline in the world couldn’t keep my eyes open much longer. With chattering teeth, I hugged myself as we moved deeper into the woods. With the cold, I was becoming increasingly vulnerable, and I didn’t like it one bit. My eyelids started to drift closed…

  I must have been slightly delirious, because I mumbled, “If you’re going to try to kill me, I want you to know I’ve got a pen in my bag.”

  “I’m not going to kill you. You have problems trusting people.”

  “Oh, you have no idea.”

  He peered at me, suddenly curious. “Why?”

  The question took me by surprise. He’d never shown much interest in me before. Somewhere, in the dark vault of my mind, my mother’s screams rang in my skull. And maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was my overwhelming exhaustion, but I had a sudden desire to just lay it all out. “What happened to me, Roan, is that my father was apparently a fae. And everything in my life is a lie.”

  “But you don’t think of him as your father anyway,” he said quietly. “A woman is the author of this achievement. You are your mother’s daughter.”

  “Men never fail to disappoint.” A cloud of breath puffed from my mouth. “It’s almost always men who are the murderers, the tyrants, the rapists. Do you know how many female serial killers I’ve analyzed? Precisely none. And let’s not forget the Virginia Stallion.” I’m not sure why I added that last bit, but I was on a roll and didn’t want to stop.

  “You’ve completely lost me at this point.” His gaze lingered over my body for a moment. “Your body is losing heat faster than it should. I can see you shivering.”

  “I’m fine.” I hated when strangers saw me as vulnerable, although right now, all I wanted to do was to curl up somewhere warm and sleep for days. Here, in the depths of the forest, snow and frost dusted the trees. My toes were completely numb. “Anyway, my ex-boyfriend called himself the Virginia Stallion. He liked to get rides with as many women as possible, as I learned not that long ago. You know, if you’re banging three chicks o
n the regular, eventually one of them will find out.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He glanced at me, arching an eyebrow. “He sounds like a loathsome cur. How did you get vengeance?”

  “What?” My shivering was getting out of control. As I spoke, my breath misted around my face. “I didn’t. I just moved out of the apartment.”

  He paused, turning to look at me. “You’re freezing.” He sounded irritated, as if this were somehow my own fault. “The chattering of your teeth is like an icepick hammering at my skull.”

  “I’m freezing because I’m basically naked and—hang on. Why is it winter here? It was summer a few miles back.”

  Moonlight glinted in his green eyes. “You’re not in the human realm anymore. The laws of nature are different here.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m still human. Or at least, half human, I guess. And humans get cold in the winter without proper clothing.”

  “Ah.” He nodded slowly, then pulled off his cloak. He wrapped it around my shoulders, pinning it together with the stag clasp. His wool cloak completely enveloped me, and I relished the warmth, the musky smell.

  When he finished, he took a step back. Something seemed to spark in his eyes. “Good. Yes.”

  “Are we almost to… wherever we’re going? Thank you for the cloak, but my body is exhausted.”

  “Nearly there,” he said. “We’ll be somewhere safe in an hour.”

  Safe from what? “I want to know where we’re going.”

  “We’re going to the Hawkwood Prison. I need your help in breaking someone out.”

  I froze in place. “You what?”

  “Keep walking.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Your frail human body won’t do well in this cold. Your muscles have tensed up already, and I can tell by your gait that your legs are aching, the right more than the left. I can also hear your stomach rumbling.” There was that irritation again. “I’ll tell you about it while we’re moving.”

  I followed after him on shaking legs.