by C. M. Cevis
“Good luck.”
The appointment was scheduled just as someone else came in, and Luna took her leave, not wanting to take up someone’s time. Therapists cost money, and she wanted anyone spending to get what they were paying for, herself included. Once she was clear of the building, she took a moment to talk to Liza about what had been bothering her.
“There’s something familiar about him, Liza. Have we seen him before?”
“Not that I remember,” Liza replied, appearing next to her as they walked.
“Hm.”
“What?”
Luna shook her head. “Maybe I’m mistaken, but I swear I know him from somewhere.”
“Not in town?”
“Maybe,” Luna said absently as she climbed into the car. “Not sure. But he says we haven’t met before.”
“How often are your hunches wrong?” Liza asked.
Luna started the car and put it in reverse to back out of the parking space.
“Never.”
23
~*~
All three gates were awake and alive in this version of the nightmare. That’s how Luna knew that she was asleep and that this was a product of her own imagination this time. The problem was that her fear had paralyzed parts of her. The parts needed to wake herself up.
One gate flashed, and through it stepped an exaggerated vampire—fangs extended past his jaw, eyes a lovely shade of pinky-red with just a touch of black around the irises. It was a color reserved for those who had gone mad.
Vampires who went mad were killed, no matter what. There was nothing else to be done, and Luna knew that. But fear rooted her to where she stood, weaponless and defenseless, as the insane creature turned its attention on her.
Then, the second gate flashed…
~*~
Luna had been staring at her laptop for the entire hour she’d been home. She’d refilled her glass of wine once, but that was all she’d done.
“Lu, if you’re not okay with doing this, just walk away. There’s other stuff we can be working on,” Liza said as Luna sighed again.
“I need to know if my brother is okay,” she whispered.
Matt had set up a system of servers for the business years ago. Luna hadn’t fully understood at the time, but she knew they could speak freely there, that business could be handled safely there, and there were safeguards in place for those who had access. Not every person with access to the space had access to everything, but Luna had been given free reign.
Matt wanted her to be fully capable to back him up if something happened and he wasn’t able to moderate the space. He’d taught her enough of what he knew to be able to handle herself. At his encouragement, she had created a few ways to get in that only she knew about. He had a few of his own, just in case.
Luna made triple-sure that she was hiding her location before she signed in.
“They’re still using it,” Liza said softly over her shoulder, looking at the various forum boards and active users.
Luna nodded. “But I don’t see Matt anywhere.”
“What’s that?” Liza asked, pointing to a minimized chat room with a title in red: What is going on?
The rooms were used both for business and for socialization, and you could tell the difference based on the name of the room.
Luna clicked.
Has anyone seen the boss lately? Either boss, even the chick, I don’t even care which now.
Not a word. We had a meeting with Morresey a few days ago and no one showed but me. That’s not like him.
When is the last time someone heard from him? Anyone?
I heard from him two weeks ago.
About ten days. Nothing since then.
Same here, and I can’t get hold of him on any of his lines.
Something is up. I don’t like this.
“I don’t like it either,” Luna whispered to herself.
“We can’t go looking for him without outing ourselves, Lu,” Liza said.
Luna closed her eyes. Snapping at her sister that she knew that already wouldn’t help.
“He was the only one that believed me about you,” Luna said, a slight lump forming in her throat.
Liza sighed. “I remember.”
Luna turned back to the laptop screen and flexed her fingers. “What are the odds these guys all know each other’s screen names?” She knew the answer but wanted Liza’s reassurance.
“Slim, judging by how people used it before we left. You know the names you interact with, and if there’s a username you don’t recognize, you just assume it’s someone you haven’t met yet.”
Luna nodded, and put her hands on the keyboard.
Anyone know the last meeting he made it to?
Her hands were shaking. This could go bad wrong very quickly if she wasn’t ridiculously careful. She didn’t need anyone figuring out who she was, or worse, coming to find her… but she had to find her brother. Even if he didn’t know that it was her, she had to make sure that he was alright.
A few replies from various users giving details on their last encounter with her brother, and then…
He went to a meeting with me and Jasper on the 3rd. Down to the docks to meet with a new supplier. He sent us back after the meeting, said he had some things to discuss with the new guy and he’d be right behind us. I don’t think any of us has seen him since.
No one could give her anything more recent than that. Luna pulled up a calendar. “The day after his last phone call, according to the other guys in here.”
Luna backed out of the room and clicked through a few safety nets, searching for what she wanted.
“Jackpot,” Liza said, leaning in to look at Matt’s schedule, which he had apparently started keeping on the servers. It wasn’t enough information to incriminate anyone, but it was enough for Luna.
“The meeting was at 3 p.m. at a part of the docks I don’t recognize,” Luna thought out loud.
“We’ve been gone for a while. It’s possible territory shifted.”
“Yeah,” Luna replied, clicking through a few other places. “But I don’t see anything in here that makes me think that it did. No other operations out of that place. I don’t think that’s ours.”
“Then we find out who runs out of there. It gives us somewhere to start.”
Luna nodded as an alert popped up in the corner of the screen. The click took her back into the odd room.
I found out the other day that the new supplier had some past dealings with Harry. They better not have done some dirt.
Luna’s head dropped forward, and she sighed loudly. Harry was Harlowe Means. The only person who knew what had brought about the bad blood between Harry and Luna’s father were the two of them, and neither would speak on it. Whatever had gone down, the decades had only fueled the mutual hatred.
“Looks like we’ve got two places to start,” Liza said.
Luna made a pained noise. “Yeah. Here’s hoping we don’t have to take a road trip to the one place I never want to be again.”
Liza smiled what looked like a forced smile and leaned a cold, ghostly shoulder against Luna’s.
“Fingers crossed.”
24
The basement of the palace was a repository for things that needed to be around but didn’t need to be seen or handled regularly. And things that needed to be away from the public eye. And things to be forgotten about. Only one thing was checked on regularly, and it had woken up several weeks ago.
Due to its importance, a simple room had been constructed around it—plain, with two chairs, a table, and a bell for any comers to summon the always-posted guards from outside the door.
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Maya asked Vernon softly. The two of them stood near the door, as far apart as the small room would allow.
“This is the tradition, Your Majesty, you know that. Things changed because there was no guardian and the gate had gone dormant, not because our traditions had changed.”
Maya
glanced at the large stone gate. The runes etched into the stone glowed a faint blue, matching the alarmingly bright swirl of the magic trapped in the stone. No one knew what was on the other side. And it concerned her that she hadn’t been allowed to send someone through to investigate before her son was sentenced.
“The gate has never led to anywhere dangerous before. Why would it start now?” Vernon continued, knowing where she was going.
“Why not?” Maya muttered.
The heavy wooden door swung open behind the pair, and in shuffled Gideon flanked by three armed guards. He had been contained by what amounted to a magical leash designed to bind him both physically and metaphysically. It was an effective design, one that the queen had overseen development of herself. On her own child, it seemed barbaric. The guard in front led her son toward the gate, his hands and feet shackled and connected to a line around his head and neck, like some sort of muzzle. That thing was going to be abolished as soon as she got the chance.
“It’s time,” Vernon said, holding his hand out for the… leash.
“No. I’ll do it.” Maya said, stepping forward. There was no way in hell she was going to allow another fae to lead her son about like that.
Vernon hesitated but nodded his agreement and waited as the guard handed her son over.
“The guardian should be on the other side of the gate. He or she will be the one to carry out the exile, Your Majesty. When the time of punishment is up, you and I will meet here once more to retrieve Prince Gideon and return him home.”
Maya was not going to cry. She was not going to cry. Maybe later, but not here in front of these guards and Vernon. She made herself nod and turned towards the gate, a frown on her face. Gideon, for his part, did look like he regretted the choices that had brought him to this point. But he should have thought of that long before the magic muzzle and the swirling vortex of unknown.
“Your Majesty?” Vernon said. Maya had no idea how long he’d been standing just in front of the gate while she stood there, thinking.
“Right,” she whispered.
“I’ll be okay, mom,” Gideon said softly. He could be such a good, caring son. He was about to be exiled to who knows where, and there he was, comforting her.
Maya lifted her head and faked confidence, stepping forward and through the gate, her son walking beside her. The light swirled around her, blowing her hair around her face and wrapping the skirt of her dress around her legs before… depositing her in a different basement?
The glow of the arch’s runes was the only illumination, and the pale blue light showed a dank, dark space, empty of everything except more gates. A simple wooden door stood six feet in front of her.
“Where are we?” she asked no one in particular.
Vernon stepped forward and held his hand toward the door, then hissed and jerked his hand back immediately.
“Wherever we are, we are not allowed to leave this room.”
Maya shot the old man a look. “Are you trying to tell me that in all your wisdom, you can’t break one little lock?”
If looks could kill, Vernon would have been guilty of murder. “This is not fae magic,” he snapped. “This is something more, something I am not familiar with. You of all people should know that breaking someone or something else’s magic involves understanding it first.”
Maya was being a jerk, but she didn’t care.
“What the hell?” The voice was faint, beyond the door, or perhaps above them. Motion caught her attention, and she turned just in time to miss whatever it was.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I heard it too,” Gideon said, looking around.
Vernon’s frown said he had as well, but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he replied, “I suggest we wait for whoever put this lock into place to remove it.”
“We’re just going to sit here?” Maya asked, the shock in her voice clear. “You don’t think since this guardian you promised isn’t waiting here, we should rethink this—”
Vernon turned, clearly running out of patience. “Your son will serve his sentence, Your Majesty. No matter how much you may fight against it.”
Maya closed her mouth and frowned, getting control of herself. She hadn’t stepped in to push for a commutation of any other sentences, and it was not a good look now for her to be fighting for Gideon not to serve his sentence. She trusted her people to be fair and just, and if this had been anyone else in her kingdom, she would have thought temporary exile was too light of a sentence. Her reaction was based solely on this being her son, and she realized that. But it didn’t make her fight against it any less. The choice between being a mother and being Queen was not an easy one, and royalty was losing out.
Vernon had moved to inspect the rest of the room when the protected door swung open. There stood a woman in what looked to be pajamas. She hadn’t removed the lock—Maya could still feel its power preventing her from coming much closer—simply opened the door to see who was on the other side. Beside her stood another woman who looked just like her, except she was dressed in day clothes and one of her eyes was solid white.
“Why can I see through one of them?” Gideon whispered, eyes wide. He seemed a little boy again, the bravado of the trial past, and the reality of his sentence before him. He was scared.
Maya looked again. The one with the white eye was a bit transparent. “She’s a ghost.”
“You should really refrain from making remarks about people when they can hear you,” the ghost said, clearly offended.
“Especially when you’re in my basement. You’re trespassing. Who are you, where did you come from, and what do you want? Answer. Quickly.”
Anger, not fear or reverence, dripped from her words. Maya respected that, but it wasn’t something she was used to. She was Queen.
She stood straight and moved in front of her son. “You are speaking to the queen of the northeastern fae kingdom, and you dare not show fealty?”
The ghost and the woman beside her shared a look and a smirk. It was the woman who spoke. “You’re a long way from home, Your Majesty. You aren’t queen of anything here, so I suggest you calm down. Here, you are subject to human laws, which means you are trespassing on private property. I could shoot you right now, let you bleed out before I call the cops, and say it was self-defense.”
“She is correct,” Vernon confirmed before Maya could think of anything to say in response. “We are indeed in the human’s world here, and at a disadvantage at that. Who we are, who you are, means nothing to those that aren’t fae and choose to honor it.”
“I know that,” Maya snapped. She knew more about politics than any one person should, she didn’t need to be reminded. Especially not while her emotions were so raw.
“So, I ask again,” the woman said as the ghost shifted her weight to the other hip and crossed her arms. “Who are you, where did you come from, and what do you want?”
25
Luna had been sound asleep when Liza had burst into her dreams so suddenly that she’d woken up on the verge of a scream. Liza had managed to catch her before she did and apologize for scaring the soul out of her body, but then informed her that she needed to get down to the basement. Now.
She’d heard them talking before she’d opened the door. Liza had already informed her that there were five people in the room, and that they hadn’t been able to make it past her lock. There was one thing to be thankful for, wasn’t there? So, she’d pushed the magic holding them hostage to just inside and opened the physical door, but nothing else. She had no desire to let them at her without any information as to who and what they were, and Liza hadn’t been able to tell her anything other than they’d come through the gate.
The five fae in front of her were not what she had been expecting to come through the gate.
The two in the back could only be guards, with identical swords resting lightly in their hands, similar dark, loose clothes, and that stoic non-emotional look that seemed to come standard wi
th people in that line of work.
The guy ahead of them was about Luna’s age and wore some kind of… magic muzzle that screamed at her senses. She poked at it a bit and was rewarded with a bit of a mental zap, so she backed off. His bright, almost ice-blue, eyes pierced Luna when they met hers through a short curtain of dark blonde hair, just above a well-groomed goatee. His clothes, though rumpled, screamed upper class from the supple leather boots, up the fitted dark pants and dark tailored jacket over his broad shoulders—
Luna looked away. Okay, he was cute. Beside her, Liza muffled a giggle.
The woman, who had angled herself in front of the… prisoner, Luna assumed, and said she was the queen, favored him enough for Luna to think they were related. But she was paler, thinner in the shoulders and waist, and clearly didn’t work out. White-blond hair disappeared behind her shoulders to her mid back.
Luna almost overlooked the man beside the queen, though he seemed to be thrusting out his chest in assumed importance. The rich robe, heavy with golden embroidery at the hems, did nothing to help his weak chin and sagging face. His small hands were soft, unused to manual labor. He looked to be in his sixties or seventies and looked like he smelled like old money. He did look intelligent, at least book smart. Probably not people smart judging by the way he was scowling at Luna without knowing whether she could or would injure him or not.
Mister Book Smart was the one who spoke up first.
“My name is Vernon High. I am head of the council for the kingdom of the northeast,” he said and lifted his chin as if daring her to challenge him. Luna had sensed the fae bit quickly, but that didn’t really explain why they were in her house.
Luna raised her eyebrows. “Alright. And?”
“We are here to mete out a punishment to our Prince Gideon.”
Her eyes flicked to the bound man. “I assume that you are referring to the guy on the leash?” Her eyes moved to the queen. “And you’re holding the free end? Harsh.”