by Eva Chase
“Are you sure your parents are dead?” Ruse asked, his voice carefully gentle.
“Yeah. Luna wouldn’t have kept me away from them. And, my dad at least… They cut off his head.”
I had no visual memory of that moment anymore, only the fact of what I’d seen and the thunk of it hitting the ground after it’d been flung out the window. After I’d woken up nearly every night for weeks sobbing hysterically from nightmares of that moment, Luna had used some of her magic to wipe the image itself from my mind. I don’t want to take all of it, she’d said. You need to remember why it’s important that we stay cautious. But the whole thing is too much.
All three of my guests were silent in the wake of that comment. The weight of their hesitation filled the room. I motioned my hand vaguely as if I could wave their reaction away. “If it’s the same people, then all the more reason I’ll be happy to help you track them down. I just wanted to see if any impressions from Luna’s things might be useful.”
Snap took my cue to move along. “Let me try the others, then.” He picked up the CD case and swiveled it in his hands.
Luna had indoctrinated me with a lot of her tastes, but I’d just never been able to get behind Def Leppard. Whenever she’d put that album on when I was a kid, I’d groan until she gave in and turned it off. I suspected she only liked them because of their name—she’d had a thing for big cats too.
Yet of course she’d kept it in the assortment of “essential music” that stayed in my emergency duffel bag. One of her top twenty, apparently.
Snap gave the case the same thorough examination as he had the scrunchie and frowned. “I hear a little laughter and the sense of her opening it on a couple of spots, but nothing more than that.”
“That’s okay. I knew not to get my hopes up.”
He’d left the sneakers for last. I wasn’t sure whether to have the most or the least hope for those.
Luna had adored them, called them her “fairy dust shoes”… but I’d also worn them for the most traumatic moment of my near-adult life. Sixteen-year-old me, with typical teenage rebelliousness, hadn’t left my shoes where I could easily snatch them up the night we had to flee. It’d started to seem so ridiculous that Luna insisted on so many precautions. Instead of waiting for me to search the piles of clothing around my bedroom, Luna had tossed that pair of hers at me on the way to the door.
They were too small for me by at least one size, maybe two. My recollection of the run away from the house she’d been renting was punctuated by the pinch of my constricted toes, sharper with each step.
No doubt Snap tasted that fraught impression first. He glanced at me again, his divine face haunted by a brief sadness, and then went on with his investigations. I resisted the urge to fidget.
“It’s only fragments,” he said after a while. “I think because it’s been so long—I’m sorry. A lot of happiness when she wore them. And… I get a hint of missing someone they reminded her of, someone who was fae like her maybe? Did she have shadowkind friends? Someone else who might have been taken?”
“I don’t know.” I was a little ashamed that it’d never really occurred to me to wonder about Luna’s social life or lack thereof. “Except when I was at school, she was always with me, and we never visited anyone. We never stayed in any city for more than a couple of years to make close friends.”
But maybe there’d been someone she’d left behind in one of those cities—or way back in the shadow realm—that she’d never mentioned to me. Another sacrifice she’d made, one without my ever knowing.
“This line of investigation does not appear to be very fruitful,” Thorn declared gruffly. He stalked over to the window to survey the street outside as if he felt he’d find more sense of direction there.
“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Ruse said more encouragingly. “When we’ve got this little to go on, can’t leave any stone unturned.” He flashed me a smile before getting up.
As the incubus slipped out of the room, Snap put away the shoes. He sighed, all this enthusiasm over contributing having faded away, and stood up. My stomach twisted, but if nothing else, he’d shown he could be respectful of my past traumas. Thorn didn’t appear to be paying attention anyway—and what did I care what he thought, the big grouch?
I touched Snap’s arm. “Wait. There’s something else—not to do with Luna. Just, for me… It’s even more of a longshot, but anything you pick up from it that doesn’t involve me would be more than I’ve got now.”
I pulled out the trinket box with its pearly shell casing. Snap took it from me with tentative fingers. He considered it and then my face.
“This wasn’t the fae’s,” he ventured. “It belonged to your parents?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s—it’s the only thing I have of theirs. They’d given it to Luna to keep for me, just in case.”
There was a letter inside, one I’d pored over so many times I couldn’t imagine it held any impressions that weren’t of me. Telling me that if I was reading it, they were sorry they weren’t there with me, but they hoped I was staying safe with Luna. That what was most important to them was me getting to live my life as fully as I could.
They’d known the hunters might retaliate. They’d been prepared. But I hadn’t been. I remembered my mother’s scream and the sound of my father meeting his death more clearly than anything else about them.
Snap dipped his head so low it was almost a bow. “I appreciate your trusting me with this. I’ll handle it carefully.”
He began his testing even more slowly than before, his tongue flitting here and there, his breath sucked in and expelled. I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I waited. Finally, he lowered the box.
“You’re right,” he said. “There isn’t much. But they had a lot of feeling around this object, so a bit of it clung on even across that many years. They were very sad about the thought that you might need to receive this. Afraid of losing their time with you—but not of the course they’d taken. They were proud of that, of taking risks…” He took another taste as if to clarify that thought. “I get the sense they felt they wouldn’t have had you in their lives at all if they hadn’t taken those risks.”
“Maybe they met through the Fund, through the shadowkind work they were doing,” I said.
“That makes sense.” He offered the box back to me. Our hands brushed as I took it, and he offered me a smile so soft but bright that I lost my breath like I had that first morning when he’d compared my hair to the peach. “The one thing I can tell for sure is they loved you more than anything else in all the realms.”
I choked up abruptly. “Thank you. For all of this. I’ll do whatever I can to find the people who took your boss.”
“I know you will.” He touched my hair again, just for a moment, still smiling. “I thought so when you broke into my cage, but I think it even more now. You’re meant to do good things, Peach.”
Then he ambled away, leaving me wondering why I felt as if I’d needed so very badly to hear someone tell me that.
9
Thorn
If I were not beholden to our liberator’s efforts on our behalf, there were many things I could have complained about in regards to this mortal woman. The way she rattled the ends of the twig-like things she’d called “chopsticks” against the sides of one of the boxes our dinner had arrived in. The squeak of the kitchen chair’s feet as she periodically tipped back her weight in it. The little laughs she made to herself while she prodded her “laptop” into producing information that apparently was more amusing than useful to our quest.
She made a lot of jokes, this one. Here in her home, out at the bridge, in that large room full of padded chairs where she’d met with the rest of her “Fund” friends. And always singing her silly songs too. As if Omen’s life might not depend on how quickly we could decipher what had happened to him. As if so many other lives might not hang in the balance based on what we discovered.
But none of those things were worth putting
into words, not when I knew that without her I’d have still been locked in a cage. I might not appreciate her attitude, but I’d ensure no harm came to her on my watch. If it itched at me that I wasn’t out scouring the streets for our leader right now, I had only to remind myself that the mortal had uncovered far more connections in the past day than we’d managed in the many weeks before. The fact that most of those weeks had been spent in captivity only compounded that failure.
Omen had counted on us. He’d counted on me, specifically, to defend our group and subdue any enemies we encountered. It didn’t matter what the incubus said—he was made to cajole and placate. I had failed, again, and if I didn’t correct that failing quickly, it could turn into an even greater disaster than the time before.
“Ah ha!” the lady crowed, and waved her hand rather wildly at the glowing screen of her device. “There’s a flea market in a town near here called Merry Den Market.”
I couldn’t imagine there being much of a demand among mortals to buy fleas, but she seemed satisfied with the discovery. I stirred in the chair I’d taken across from her. “You believe the people we’re looking for could be keeping Omen there?”
“I don’t know.” A thin line formed on her pale brow as she tapped one of those chopsticks against her lips. “It doesn’t look like the kind of place hunters or anyone else dealing in shadowkind would operate out of… but you can’t always tell by appearances. That could make it a perfect cover. It’s closed now, but we can go check it out tomorrow. I won’t be able to stop by Jade’s until the evening anyway.”
Ruse straightened up from where he’d been lounging against the doorframe. “A little road trip. I’m looking forward to it.”
Since we’d finished our meal, Snap had been puttering around the mortal’s living room asking the incubus about every object he encountered. Now, the devourer poked his head out, his eyes eagerly wide. “Road trip? Does that mean we’ll take one of those… cars?”
The lady grimaced. “I don’t have one. Not much need for it when you’re living downtown—and you can make stealthier getaways on foot. I actually never even got my license.” She looked vaguely embarrassed about this admission, as if there were any honor in burning gas through a metal shell to make wheels spin.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that there might be horses we can make use of?” I said.
Her mouth twitched, because apparently she found that remark amusing as well. “Sorry, but no. It looks like there’s a bus that should drop us off right outside, though.”
“Should we ever find ourselves with a car of some sort, I can manage to drive,” Ruse offered. “I may even be able to help with the finding one part.”
She shot him a skeptical glance, still smiling. “You mean you’d seduce someone into giving us theirs?”
He spread his hands with a smirk in return. “I’d rather think of it as reminding them of the potential generosity in their nature.”
I shifted in my seat again, tamping down on my irritation. The incubus never took anything all that seriously either. His skill at reading and manipulating emotions would have come in handy if we’d gotten farther into our investigations with Omen, but he was no use at all in a battle.
“Let’s see if I can turn up any other promising results, in case the flea market isn’t what we’re looking for,” the lady said, returning her attention to the computer.
Snap was still peering into the kitchen. “What’s a bus?” he asked.
Ruse motioned him back into the living room, following at his heels. “Let Sorsha do her computer magic. I’ll explain.”
“The computer runs on magic?”
The incubus chuckled before their voices faded out with the closing of the door. The lady’s smile turned wry. “Sometimes it does seem that way. Including the unpredictable element. Oh, hey, Pickle.”
She clucked her tongue, and the little green creature that appeared to follow her all around the apartment scrambled up to her lap and then her shoulder. She plucked one last morsel of sauced chicken out of the carton and offered it to him. He gulped it down with a bob of his long throat and a pleased thrum of his chest plates.
Watching, I found I couldn’t quite hold my tongue about that gnawing complaint.
“You freed us and the lesser beings in that prison from our cages,” I said. “Why do you keep this creature at your beck and call?”
She reached up to scratch the underside of the minor shadowkind’s chin. “Beck and call? You haven’t been paying attention if you think Pickle listens to me any more often than he wants to.”
“He is confined here, is he not? You don’t let him leave.” I’d never seen him so much as dip into the shadows, though I couldn’t see any evidence of how she might have forced his physical presence.
The mortal fixed her gaze on me more steadily then, with a puzzled blink. “He stays because he wants to. It’s a pretty good gig—food and cuddles for doing a very half-assed job as a guard dragon.”
Did she suppose that made her possession of him acceptable? “The ‘collector’ who imprisoned us fed us as well.”
Her free hand balled where it was resting on the table. “You’re comparing me to those pricks? Are you kidding me?”
Any trace of humor had left her voice. I’d clearly offended her. That seemed only fair, when the sight of her carting around her pet shadowkind offended me at least as much.
“You’re welcome to educate me on exactly how it’s different,” I said.
Her jaw tensed. For a second, I thought I might see a flare of anger as scorching as that hair of hers. Then she appeared to master herself. She stroked the creature’s flank.
“I don’t need to justify myself to you,” she said, her tone more cold than fiery. “I’m doing you all kinds of favors. But since you brought it up—Pickle can’t survive on his own. The hunter who sold him or the collector who bought him had his wings clipped so he can barely fly, and he wasn’t made to get around by walking—if you can even call that waddle ‘walking.’ Would anyone back in the shadow realm make sure he had all the food he needs and that he didn’t go stumbling through a rift into a hunter’s snare again?”
I had noticed the creature barely used those wings, but I had to admit I’d assumed it was laziness due to his captivity, not a disability. As to her question… I gritted my teeth before I answered, “No, I don’t suppose there would be.”
“Exactly. I wasn’t looking to take on a pet, let alone one I’d have to hide from any regular person who comes around the apartment, but he was there in one of the houses I set fire to a couple years back, and he obviously couldn’t look after himself, so I wasn’t going to just abandon him.”
She brandished her chopsticks at me. “You should be glad I’m not in the habit of kicking shadowkind to the curb, or imagine where you could be. If you want to be mad at someone, make it the assholes who thought mangling Pickle’s body was a reasonable way to treat another living being.”
She was obviously mad at them. Her voice had stayed flat, but a tartness had crept into her tone, and the bright flash of her copper-brown eyes— I wasn’t sure I’d envy any mortal being who went up against her. Imagine what she might do with a sword.
Perhaps, under the jokes and frivolity, she did care quite a bit.
“My apologies,” I said, with a stiffness I couldn’t smooth out. “I shouldn’t have leapt to such a conclusion. You’ve been very generous with us—and it seems you are with your little green companion as well.”
Sorsha eyed me for a moment longer as if confirming that I was being genuine. Then she relaxed in her chair. Now that I recognized the bond as one of protection rather than incarceration, it was impossible not to see the affection with which she tipped her cheek toward the creature to meet his nuzzle.
No, I hadn’t been fair at all. I grappled with the twist of discomfort that acknowledgment brought and then leaned forward. If she could surprise me that much, I’d like to discover what else I might have missed.
>
“Tell me more about this ‘flea market,’ would you, m’lady?”
10
Sorsha
As we stepped off the bus by the flea market’s gate, Thorn tugged at his fingerless gloves as if he’d like them better if he adjusted the fit for the one hundredth time. I checked Ruse’s cap to make sure it was hiding all sign of his horns. Catching my examination, he tipped the brim to me in a jaunty salute.
“All monstrous features well hidden away,” he said with a grin.
The four of us had gotten into a bit of an argument about them accompanying me at all. The trio had promised to keep their nature under wraps, but given Ruse’s casual attitude and the others’ inexperience with modern life, I wasn’t convinced they’d keep it. I’d done my best to stress how ill-prepared most of my fellow twenty-first century mortals were to cope with the idea of supernatural beings in their midst.
I pointed a finger at him, just shy of waggling it. “I’ll be watching you.”
In some ways, Snap had both the easiest and the hardest time of it. Concealing his tongue didn’t require any awkward fashion statements, but on the other hand, it also meant he had to rein in his enthusiasm at least a little—and refrain from using his power. From the way he gazed around us as we stepped under the awning that shaded the outer half of the market, he’d have liked to test a whole lot of the objects around us.
“Remember,” I said quietly to the trio. “We’re looking for any sign of shadowkind or that sword-star symbol. Try to stay focused.”
Ruse gave me a thumbs-up. Thorn frowned as if he resented the reminder and strode on slightly ahead of the rest of us.
I had to give Snap a little nudge to get him moving again. He tilted his head at a curious angle, taking in a used electronics booth and a table stacked with scented candles. Farther along, pendulums swung on intricately carved wooden clocks. He couldn’t seem to help stopping to follow the rhythm of one for a few seconds.