I had been had.
I could barely speak. My jaw seemed to have fused shut in its attempt to keep a backlash of anger inside. I had never been good at dealing with authority figures and blatant abuses of power. This was no different. I adopted the sickeningly sweet passivity I usually saved for those smart-ass moments where I was about to get canned or dumped no matter what came out of my mouth. “I see. That must be terribly convenient for you. And now that your end of the deal is ‘fulfilled’ what, exactly, do you expect from me?”
“The same as before. You will help us find the Lynx.” He never wavered. The fucker never so much as blinked. “That was your bond.”
Good God damn, did I ever want to hit him. So hard. There was no malice in his response but that only made it worse. He had no compunction when it came to refusing me the help that might be the difference between my eventual life and death—but he also felt no remorse. He had lived up to the letter of his promise and was required to do no more. I, on the other hand, had no excuse to call off my end of the deal—which also suited him just fine, of course. My lips drew back in a snarl. “Oh yeah? And what if I refuse? What if I say fuck you and your backstabbing bullshit deal?”
He remained impassive, that steady gaze never wavering. He didn’t have to say anything and he knew it. He knew I couldn’t back out. Who would stand with me against the creepy crawlies if I walked away now? Sure, I could likely defend myself one-on-one—but what if they came in twos or threes? Argoth might be dead and Liam was beyond my reach, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t had connections here. Who knew who else out there might still know about me and where I lived? It didn’t matter what kind of crazy faerie mojo might be waiting for me if I tried to break my end of the damned pact. Even that had become moot. I was completely dependent on him and the bastard knew it.
I stood there for another moment, dumbstruck. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to stomp around in a crazy, stompy rage. It was all so incredibly unfair that I wanted to fall to the floor and never get up again. Instead, I curtsied at the lord of the manor—making it all that much more of a mockery in my tank top and yoga pants—before I turned and left. I only stopped long enough to grab my coat and purse from the alcove by the door before I headed down the front stairs two at a time.
No one tried to follow me.
I slid into my car and threw my purse into the passenger seat. I had the key in the ignition before I froze, wondering just where the hell I intended to go. Gilroy’s? Jenni’s? Home? The world around me was an unfriendly blur and all I wanted was something familiar. Something normal. Maybe that was just a pipe dream, but I had to believe it still existed out there, somewhere.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring off at nothing as the tears dried on my cheeks. The harsh light of day had finally pierced through to the center of me and I had no more lies to hide behind; no more fluffy dreams to shroud the cold truth of reality. There was no one else in this world that cared as much about my fate as I did. No one was going to save me. Perhaps I had always known that. I had been careless and stupid, letting my life get intertwined with that of these weirdos. Maybe I had wanted excitement and adventure, but I hadn’t stopped to consider the costs. Didn’t matter now, of course. It was too late for take backs.
Or was it?
My life in Riverview was in shambles, yes, but there was a great big world out there. What would I be leaving behind, really? A job I hated? People who didn’t give a shit about me? The thought of never seeing my family again, however estranged we were, made my chest ache but perhaps that too would be for the best. They’d be safer. I’d be safer. Maybe that whole distance making the heart grow fonder crap would heal the wounds between us. Maybe I’d be able to drop in on them one day, when I had become less of a liability.
I didn’t know what I’d do or where I’d go, but I could figure that out as I went. Surely the High King and his hordes wouldn’t be able to find one little human among billions, right? Hell, even if they could, that didn’t mean I had to sit around at the center of the bull’s eye, waiting for them to strike. I wasn’t sure which was making me lightheaded: the fear or the excitement. Either way, it was good to be feeling something.
For months I had been letting myself be lead along, like a passenger in my own life. Now there was something I could decide on for myself. There was no going back and I was tired as hell of sitting still. Why not shake things up? The contents of my life would fit neatly in the trunk of my car and, while I didn’t have too much money squirreled away, I probably had enough to get me a few states away. I could find work, a cheap room for rent; something to pass the time, where no one knew me and there weren’t soul-sucking creatures lurking around every corner. I pictured myself tucked away in some dusty, rural place where there were miles between houses, waiting tables at some mom-n-pop diner until I had enough money to move on to the next town. The picture wasn’t that bad. I should have felt scared of such uncertainty but I didn’t.
Goddamn. I let out a long, shaky breath. Was I really going to do this? Was I going to make a run for it and leave everything I knew behind? It was batshit crazy, but what in my life wasn’t? Maybe another dose of crazy was exactly what I needed to fix the mess the old crazy had made of me. What was stopping me?
Other than a blood oath to a backstabbing fairy son of a bitch, of course.
I still needed to find them their Lynx. That elusive bastard was the last hurdle between me and a fresh break—a break I hadn’t realized I wanted quite so badly until that very moment. I needed to find him, so I could put some distance between myself and the Caitlin Moore I had once been. I didn’t know how long I had before Texas Pete spilled the beans and a host of angry fae came hunting for my ass but I didn’t want to wait around to find out.
I fished my phone out of my purse. I didn’t even wait for a greeting when the ringing cut off. “Mai, I’m outside. Get dressed. We’ve got work to do—and fast.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Another week of failure.
I tossed my purse onto the chair by the door and threw myself down on my borrowed bed. I screamed my frustration into the pillow until I was breathless and needed to come up for air, rolling over on my back to stare up at the ceiling. This sucked. I was exhausted, cranky, and just generally longing to throw things. Not even at a particular target, really. The wall would do. I was so frustrated. I might have made up my mind to take charge and get shit done but that didn’t mean dick.
Fate wasn’t letting me go that easy.
Every day felt like a lifetime. Each minute that passed was a step toward the gallows; another step Texas Pete made on his way to rat me out to the High King. Mairi had assured me that there was no direct passage from my realm to Tír na nÓg proper. It was marginally comforting to think that the smarmy bastard would have a long journey ahead of him before could even begin to seek an audience with the king. I hope it rained the whole time.
That didn’t solve much in the long run, though. It only gave me a month or two of a head start, tops. Given how many failed attempts we had made to locate the Lynx, the numbers weren’t coming in on my side. Seana had tried to soften the edges of my hysteria with a reminder that the king was indeed mad. There was a good chance that he wouldn’t believe a word Pete said. My bloodline was supposed to be long gone, and a banished ex-Guardian’s tale of a human girl in a far off city possessing it might be passed off as a wacky scheme to extort royal favor. That was all well and good, but what crazy, paranoid monarch would ignore the possibility of such a threat to his throne? No one had been able to argue against that point. Score one for me. (Yay.)
The truth was, no one could predict what would happen next. No one knew for sure how long it would take Pete to reach the king’s realm. No one even knew how long it would take for him to get the king’s ear once he arrived. Maybe news that big would get him an audience on the day he arrived. Maybe the King would have him tossed in the dungeons for telling ludicrous lies. Who knew? T
he vagueness of it all was killing me. Every day I half expected to be told that the Lynx had “moved on” beyond our reach as well, crushing the last little bit of hope that remained. That would be my luck.
“Brooding again?”
I held up a certain finger in the time old gesture of “I don’t find your joke funny.” I was in no mood for, well, anything. I just wanted to sulk.
“Come on, Cat. Get changed and get moving. ”
I heard the muffled thunk of my purse hitting the top of the dresser. Damn. Mairi was clearing off the chair and making herself comfortable. That meant there was no hope of privacy for my sulking. “Maybe I don’t want to get moving. Maybe I’d rather explore the full majesty of my misery.”
I sounded pre-tween whiny even to my own ears.
“And maybe I want an all-expense paid trip to Fiji so I can work on my tan.” My, she sounded tart tonight. She continued, “Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll both get what we want—but not until we find the Lynx. So, come on. Stop brooding and get up. We’ve got a fresh lead to check.”
“What’s the point?” I moaned, scrubbing at my face with my hands.
“The point is that all we can do is keep trying. You said it yourself—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what I said.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. She was folded up cross-legged on the chair by the door in that obnoxiously bendy way the young could still manage. Show off. I ached down to my very bones in a way that had nothing to do with sword-fighting and everything to do with sleep deprivation. The continuous rollercoaster of depression probably wasn’t helping. “Stop reminding me.”
She gave me her best look of disapproval, which really just came off as sassy duck-face. She mimicked me far too perfectly when she said, “‘Time is of the essence, Mai. Don’t let me get distracted by my funk!’ We need to find him a.s.a.p., remember? So you can get your pretty little ass the hell out of Dodge.”
She met me scowl for scowl. In hindsight, telling her my plan to run off into the setting sun the minute I had completed my bargain with Kaine had been a huge mistake. She hadn’t taken it very well. While she hadn’t come right out and voiced her resentment, the sudden swells of moody contempt spoke volumes. I didn’t quite understand why she was so mad at me. We had become close over the past few months, but what had she expected? It wasn’t like I had ever intended to join their merry band and follow them home once this was all over. Kaine could treat me like a lackey all he wanted—that didn’t mean I was some sort of rare and majestic human pet. The plan had always been to find the Lynx, shake hands, and go our separate ways.
Whatever. I didn’t have the energy to deal with her teenage snit.
She was right though. I had said just that. Continuing to argue with her because I wanted to wallow in self-pity would be futile. I scooted off the bed and started to riffle through the dresser for a clean pair of jeans. “What’s the deal this time? Another stupid café with fancy, overpriced lattes? This city has more freaking cafés than I ever thought possible.”
“A bar, actually. Word has it that he’s a regular there. Surprise, surprise; all this time we’ve been hopped up on caffeine when we could have been pickling our livers.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out on one knee. “Let’s see—its downtown, on the corner of Maple and Green.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” She didn’t need to say anything else. My stomach had already dropped. “Gilroy’s?”
“Huh—yeah, that’s right. How did you…”
The silence was deafening.
I turned around and saw her giving me a wide-eyed stare, her mouth a charming little o of surprise. Things had just clicked into place for her. “I didn’t make the connection when Seana told me. That’s where we first met you, isn’t it?”
I nodded. The place where I had met them. The place where the troll had attacked me. The place where my former best friend worked. The place I had once called a second home. The place where all I had known had died and everything since had been one long, fucked up nightmare. I leaned back against the dresser, covering my face with my hands like that would hold in the depreciative laughter. Oh, how fucking perfect was this?
Fate really kept giving it to me good, sans lube.
I knew she wanted to save me this pain, somehow—to tell me to forget it, to tell me we’d find him somewhere else—but she couldn’t. Maybe her freaky intuition was telling her the same thing mine was: this wasn’t a lead we could ignore. I stared up at the ceiling, not caring how the overhead light seared itself into my gaze. Going blind would have been preferable to dealing with this. “Does this source actually know the Lynx? Are we absolutely sure, 100% sure, that this is for real?”
“I don’t know. They don’t name names when they tell me things, but Seana seemed to think the lead was solid. Maybe this guy is a friend of the Lynx, or maybe it’s just another random acting on rumors…”
No. I felt it in my gut. This was where he would be. This was the one stone we had never thought to turn over. I took a deep, shaky breath. I had come too close to freedom from all this to back away now. I had to face it all—my past, my mistakes, my fears—if I was ever going to get past this. I pulled a t-shirt out and shrugged into it, over my cami. “Then we’ll do what we’ve got to do. No other choice, right?”
“Cat…”
As I turned she collided with me; arms wrapped around my waist and her head buried in my chest. “I’m so sorry we made such a mess of your life. I’m sorry I’ve been such a twat. I just don’t want you to go! No one else gets me. No one else even acts like I’m in the room. They all treat me like a kid or a freak and I don’t want to go back to that. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister and I don’t want to lose you!”
I hugged her back, hard. I shushed her with soothing sounds, my throat tightened in a vice grip. Hearing her weep, I felt like a part of me was breaking loose inside. An avalanche of emotion I was powerless to stop threatened to bury us both. I understood her pain on so many levels. That part of her that felt different and powerless; hadn’t I still been that very same lost little girl on my 30th birthday? I even understood her looming fear of abandonment deep inside, in that place that had always longed for the close, loving family that biology hadn’t given me. I wanted to break down and rail at the unfairness of it all—only, we didn’t have time for such things now.
Goddamn, I wanted to hate how much I had come to love the little weirdo. I resented the shit-storm the fae had made of my life, but they had given me the frustratingly entertaining little sister I had always wanted. I pushed her back, gently, and smoothed her hair back from her face. It was a riot of neon pink, orange, and yellow this week. It made me smile. “I know you don’t. I wish I didn’t have to leave you either.” Her red-rimmed, watery eyes broke my heart. “Look, I don’t know where I’m going when this is all over—but it’s not over yet. Let’s just get through tonight and see what happens, okay?”
She scrubbed at her face and put on a stoic façade. She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
I pushed her toward the door. “Give me ten. I’ll meet you at the car. Let’s find this asshole.”
~*~
Walking up to the door of Gilroy’s was as fun as approaching the guillotine. I hadn’t been there since the night of my birthday. That was so many months ago that it now felt like a lifetime. I felt guilty for having avoided the place for so long, like my sudden absence might have somehow offended the very stones of the walkway my feet trod upon. That sounded crazy but, hey, what in my life wasn’t crazy?
I hesitated, my hand hovering above the doorknob. Mairi was two steps behind me, cloaked in the glamour that would make her invisible to the other patrons. It was a necessary evil given her baby face. Unfortunately, that made my job a bit harder. Sitting alone, murmuring to myself was bound to attract some attention—especially if Jenni was working the bar tonight. I didn’t know how I was going to do this without some sort of scene occurring. Hell, I w
as fully expecting this evening to unravel into an all-out, character damaging debacle.
Saying a quick prayer to whatever higher power might be listening, I whispered, “Show time.”
Mairi took my hand and squeezed it briefly. “Right behind you.”
That was small comfort for a gal who did her level best to avoid sticky situations like the one I was about to dive in to, but I’d take it. I opened the door wide and hoped she would be able to squeeze through behind me without too much fuss. As soon as I was two steps into the room, Rodrigo turned and looked at me, doing a double-take before a wide grin split his face. “Caitlin!” He stood up and engulfed me in a bear hug that lifted my feet clear off the ground. “Holy shit, it’s been forever! Where you been?”
“Can’t breathe, ‘Rigo,” I wheezed. His love was about to crush my newly healed ribcage.
“Sorry.” He chuckled as he put me back down. He held my arm until I was steady on my feet. One of his huge hands squeezed my shoulder. His joy at seeing me was so genuine it made me feel all that much more a heel. “It’s been months, girl. I was beginning to think we’d never see you again.”
My eyes were already scanning the place in a franticly covert manner. Mairi had made it in. She picked her way through the room to an out of the way table that would still give us a good view without too many eavesdropping ears nearby. “Uh, yeah, I know. Sorry. I’ve been having a rough time lately.”
His face fell. His hands clenched into angry fists. “Jen told me about what happened that night, on your birthday. I wish I had known. I coulda done something about that creep. I would have pounded that motherfucker into the ground for laying a hand on you.”
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