by Kailin Gow
“And that question will be?”
Tavian shrugged. “Anything I choose. And the answer must be truthful. That is how the game works.”
“So you are playing games with me now?” Scarlett demanded.
Tavian shook his head at that. “I might be, but in this case, it is because I want to know more about you. Will you agree?”
Scarlett barely hesitated. “All right. Why can you walk through the mist?”
Tavian grinned. “That’s an easy one. Because I am not wholly Roma.”
“Then what-”
Tavian put a finger to Scarlett’s lips. “It is my turn. Why did Sherlock Holmes bring you in to try to find the ring?”
Scarlett bit back the urge to tell Tavian a half-truth like the one he had just told her. “Because I have the talent for seeing the supernatural. I have always had it, ever since I was a girl.”
“Really? Then…”
It was Scarlett’s turn to put her fingers to his lips. “My question. If you are not a gypsy, then what are you? Another vampire?”
Tavian shook his head. “No, not that. Never that. Does seeing the supernatural bother you?”
“No,” Scarlett said. “It is a privilege, even if it is one I do not understand. I have the opportunity to see things that other people will never see, and that sometimes lets me help them when other people cannot. Some of the supernatural is strange, but so much more of it is beautiful.”
Tavian nodded.
“Exactly what are you?” Scarlett asked.
Tavian smiled. “I could dodge that too, you know, if I wanted. But I won’t. Will you stand up a moment, Scarlett?”
Scarlett stood, unsure of what it had to do with getting an answer to her question, but willing to trust Tavian enough to go along with it. Tavian stood too, looking into her eyes for a long moment.
“It is easier to show you what I am than to tell you,” he said, “and anyway, I have wanted to do this since I saw you. Especially since the vampire has already come close to making up your mind.”
That should probably have warned Scarlett what was coming next. With a delicacy that surprised her, Tavian slid his hands to the back of Scarlett’s head and kissed her.
Chapter 16
The kiss was different to the way Cruces’ had been so soon before. It was gentler, softer, and more open. It did not demand that Scarlett kiss Tavian back. It asked, and she did. Oh, she did. If that had been all there was to it, it would have been enough, but it wasn’t. Instead, from almost the moment their lips met, Scarlett found her head filling with images. It should not have been possible, but she could see them clearly, could almost feel them.
She was standing on the edge of a village. It was not a large village, and it did not have a railway line running to it. It was tiny and sleepy, hidden in the shadow of the woodlands around. It was a place of tiny cottages and small dreams. And on the edge of the village, there sat caravans, where gypsies had come to ply their trades for a brief time. The scene before Scarlett shifted then, and she found herself in one of those caravans. There was a crib in that room, a rough, wooden thing containing two babies that looked to be no more than days old. They were sleeping close to one another.
They even slept when hands lifted them from the crib, placing two more babies down where they had lain, swaddled in blankets against the cold of the night. For a moment, Scarlett was not certain about what had happened. She went over to the crib bending over it to stare down at the tiny forms within. Delicately, careful not to disturb them, she peeled back the swaddling blankets so that she could see the babies better.
Both had black hair and one had familiar, very familiar, green eyes. Both looked up at Scarlett, making her wonder exactly how that could happen. This was a dream, after all. A vision of the past. Yet there was no doubt that even as Scarlett looked at the children, they looked back at her. There was one more surprise beneath the swaddling cloth too. The children now in the crib had wings.
They were small wings, delicate wings, like those of a dragonfly fluttering above a summer pond. They flexed as the children below stared up at her, and Scarlett had to wonder just what these children were. What kind of children had wings? What kind of children replaced others in their crib?
The answer to both questions came to Scarlett in a rush. The children in the crib now certainly were not human, because human children did not have wings. That meant that they had to be some form of supernatural creature, and one form of supernatural creature was notable for stealing children. The fey. The children in the crib were changelings, fey children left to be brought up by humans. And, since Tavian was the one showing her this vision, and since the deep green of those eyes was so very familiar, that meant…
Tavian and Cecilia were fey children. They were changelings. It was the only answer that made any sense.
Even as Scarlett decided that, Tavian pulled away from her enough to look her carefully in the eyes. His finger traced the contours of her face in a way that seemed to come half from affection and half from worry. He seemed almost afraid. Afraid that Scarlett would recoil from what she had just seen, perhaps?
“Did you see it?” Tavian asked. “Did you see the vision?”
Scarlett had to nod. “I saw it. Why show it to me?”
“I owed you an answer.” Tavian shook his head. “But it was more than that. I have not shown that to anyone else before, Scarlett. You are special, I feel it, and you need to know. There is a bond between us.”
Scarlett pulled back slightly more at those words. She liked Tavian. She had liked kissing him. Even so, she was not going to let him make some kind of claim on her.
“That is not what I mean,” Tavian said, obviously sensing her discomfort. “I just mean that there must be something we share, because no ordinary person would have been able to see what I showed you.”
The word ‘ordinary’ took Scarlett’s thoughts back to the sight of those two children in the crib.
“You are a changeling,” she said. “Cecilia too. The fey… they swapped you for gypsy children.”
Tavian nodded. “But I was raised among the gypsies. I was raised human, the way you were.”
“What do you mean by that?” Scarlett demanded. “I am human. My mother and father are perhaps a little odd, but they are definitely human.”
“And yet you saw the vision.”
“Well, I have always been able to see the supernatural. That doesn’t mean anything,” Scarlett insisted. “It isn’t like I go around flying or changing my shape. Really, Tavian, what you are suggesting…”
Tavian spread his hands. “I do not want to suggest anything to upset you. I will merely say that Cecilia and I always saw what was really there, too.”
Scarlett shook her head. She was not going to unseat everything she knew about her life on the strength of mere supposition. Nor was she going to even contemplate some of the possibilities that came into her head in those moments. There was undoubtedly a simple explanation anyway. Perhaps one of her distant ancestors had been part fey, or something similar. It was far more likely than anything Tavian seemed to be implying.
To change the subject, and because she was not going to give up on her case that easily, she decided to ask the obvious question. “Tavian, if Cecilia knows that she is not Romany, then her story about wanting it as an heirloom of Roma royalty is nonsense. Why did she really take it?”
Tavian sat back down at the table, staring at it for a second or two. Scarlett sat down too.
“Tavian?” she said when he did not speak immediately. “I need to know.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I suppose you do.”
“Then why would Cecilia really have taken it?” Scarlett looked at the young gypsy man. “What is it that I am missing?”
“You have to understand that Cecilia is not a bad person,” Tavian said, “but she is obsessed.”
Scarlett knew the kinds of things that obsession could do. “What is she obsessed with?”
“With our past,” Tavian explained, tracing a pattern on the tabletop. “With what we are. I have come to peace with the fact that we live in this world, but Cecilia thinks that is not enough. She wants to go home.”
“Home?” Scarlett found herself thinking of all the legends she had heard when it came to the fey, and particularly about those that claimed they lived in a special land beyond the reach of humankind. “She thought the ring would get her there.”
“Exactly,” Tavian said. “Everywhere we went, she would ask questions. She would learn the old legends of the faerie folk, and she would talk to those who claimed to have seen them. She said it was learning about our heritage.”
Scarlett cocked her head to the side. “You do not agree?”
Tavian looked momentarily angry. “I have learned some things about the fey, but I learned the most important things when they took away two human children and abandoned us in their place. I was brought up among the Roma. That is what matters. To me, I am human.”
“But Cecilia does not think so?” Scarlett asked.
Tavian shook his head. “No. She would talk about finding our real parents. About getting back to our fey home. And if she thought that Darthmoor’s ring would help…”
“She would not hesitate to take it,” Scarlett finished for him. “Why now, then? I was under the impression that she had worked for Cruces for a while.”
“Cecilia started to have visions,” Tavian explained. “Ones similar to the one you had just now. They showed her glimpses of another place. She was desperate to get to it.”
Scarlett looked at him directly. “And you did not tell me this because…”
“Because at first, it seemed like you might just be working for Darthmoor. I showed you where to find Cecilia, though.”
“Yes,” Scarlett agreed, “you did.” An idea came to her. “And you might just do it again.”
She did not give Tavian a chance to ask how as she leaned over the table to kiss him once more. It had to be worth a try, didn’t it? After all, if that was what triggered a vision in her the first time, then maybe doing it again would give her some useful information. It wasn’t exactly as if it was an onerous way to hunt for clues.
Images did not leap immediately into Scarlett’s mind, but she could feel the presence of a second set of thoughts and feelings alongside her own. Tavian’s. Thoughts that wanted the kiss to go on forever. That wanted it to be so passionate that Scarlett forgot about the likes of Lord Darthmoor and gave herself wholly to him. That loved the taste of her lips against his, and…
Scarlett fought for control, pulling back from Tavian’s thoughts as best she could even as she wondered how she could possibly learn them like that. Yet she knew that to have any chance of making the connection between them work once more, she could not afford to hold back like that. She had to give herself up to the moment completely.
Scarlett did her best. She kissed Tavian like he was the only man in the world. She kissed him until the establishment around them faded into the background, lost among the intensity of their lips on one another’s. Scarlett kissed Tavian deeply, taking everything she could from the kiss, and Tavian kissed her back with every bit as much passion.
At that point, like water from a dam that had finally burst, visions washed over Scarlett. She saw a place that could not be England, with a landscape that was impossible in its beauty. She saw figures roving over it, clashing against one another in waves of flesh and violence. Some were pale, and fast, and as they struck, Scarlett could see their fangs. Others were ethereal and lovely, armed with weapons that held no iron and fighting with every bit as much hate as their vampire foes.
The vision rolled on, and Scarlett saw battle after battle, in a war that seemed to have no end. She saw vampires falling on the homes of the fey with such violence that she would have looked away if she could have done. She saw fey striking back, killing vampires in numbers too great to count. And then she did see England. She saw London, and the battles waged in secret around it. She saw that the war was not done, but that it had merely taken a different form in this modern time and place.
More than that, Scarlett saw what she had to do next.
Chapter 17
Scarlett pulled back from Tavian then. Breathless. He was barely breathing, too, just staring at her with his intense green eyes. She understood more about the war between the vampires and the fey than she had known before. More than that, she had seen places she recognized in that vision, places that were part of the fabric of London.
“I think I can find Cecilia and the ring,” Scarlett said. “But we should go now.”
“Now?” Tavian repeated. “But why is there such a hurry? As much as I would like to say otherwise, Darthmoor and the boy with the sword might be useful to have around if there is going to be trouble.”
Scarlett shook her head. “What I know… it’s barely there. It feels like a cobweb. If I leave it too long, everything might fade, and we’ll be back to the beginning again.”
“So what exactly did you see?” Tavian asked.
Scarlett tried to put it lightly. “Just a few places that Rothschild might be hiding.”
“Rothschild? You want to go after Rothschild?”
Scarlett shook her head, standing. “I don’t want to go after him. I know how dangerous someone like him will be…”
“You don’t,” Tavian said. “You cannot, or you would not be suggesting this.”
Scarlett gripped Tavian by the arm then, a small flash of anger coming out. “Are you suggesting that I should ignore this? The evidence points to Rothschild’s involvement, from his augmentation of the Order’s mark on me to his standing in less pleasant segments of the vampire community. We have to speak with him.”
“So why not just go back to his jewelry shop and speak with him there?” Tavian asked.
“I could be wrong, but… go outside and look for it, would you?” Scarlett waited, and after a second or two just staring at her, he went and did as she asked. It was more than ten minutes before he returned.
“It’s gone,” the young gypsy man said. “I don’t understand…”
“He and those who work for him must have occupied an empty store front,” Scarlett explained. “We did not meet by accident. Rothschild went to a lot of trouble to mark me, and to give me his necklace.”
Tavian stared down at the sapphire of the pendant Scarlett wore. “You did not say that he had given you that.”
“You did not think to comment that I was wearing it after meeting him, but not before?” Scarlett asked.
“I… I did not see it,” Tavian said, staring at it again, then lifting the stone lightly in his hand. “There is magic to this. I can feel it now.”
“Something to make sure no one noticed it, perhaps?” Scarlett said, and then shook her head. “No, that cannot be all of it. There must be more to the piece, or why insist that I wear it?”
“I do not know,” Tavian said, “but I think that you should remove it.”
Do not remove it. The words sounded in Scarlett’s head clearly. Come to me, Scarlett. You are doing well.
“I think…” Scarlett struggled to work out the right thing to do. “I think that I should leave it in place for now. And we should go. It will take time to find Rothschild.”
Tavian still looked apprehensive at the thought. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “No one else but you and my sister know what I am. I did not show you that lightly, Scarlett. I… I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I intend to be careful,” Scarlett said. “And I intend to find Cecilia. I have no doubt that she will be with Rothschild. It is simply a question of where he is keeping her.”
“She might not be his prisoner,” Tavian pointed out. “She wanted the ring, and with Lord Darthmoor rejecting her, she might have gone to him willingly. Seeking out one of Darthmoor’s rivals would be like Cecilia.”
“There is still what happened at the camp to think about,” Sc
arlett pointed out.
“That could have been for your benefit,” Tavian pointed out. “It might not have been real. I love my sister, but she can be devious when she wants.”
“Then again,” Scarlett said, “I will simply have to be careful. Now, we must go.”
Tavian, obviously sensing that he was not going to change Scarlett’s mind, nodded. “Where are we going? What did you see in that vision that told you where to look?”
“Whitechapel.”
“You want to go to Whitechapel. That would be dangerous enough even without Rothschild there. Scarlett…”
“Are we going to argue again?” Scarlett asked. If necessary, she would walk out of the public house without Tavian. “I saw vampires collected in Whitechapel. Logic tells us that Rothschild is involved. My talent tells us where he is. We have to go.”
“I was merely going to say that I will need to stay close to you in a place such as that,” Tavian said. He sighed. “So much for dinner.”
They left the establishment and made their way east, first along the river, and then drifting slightly away from it, deeper into the city. They did not take a cab. It was likely that no cab would take them there. Instead, as soon as they were away from the crowds enough not to be spotted, Tavian was able to call up a mist, and they rode it together with the young gypsy man’s arms around Scarlett tightly.
The further east they got in the city, the poorer the streets below them became. The stench of the city was noticeable there, and the noise from the streets was clear. Scarlett could see people below in clothes that did not quite fit them, looking thin, ill-fed, and in some cases ill. All that was before they had even reached the limits of Whitechapel Road.
When they did, Tavian landed, and Scarlett forced herself to look around. She was not going to shy away from what she saw, even though what she saw there was squalor on a scale that made her almost ashamed to have the wealth she had. Children sat on the streets, begging openly when they should have been in school. Rough looking men kept wary eyes on the pair of them. Whitechapel was somewhere Scarlett did not think she would have visited by night, but even in daylight, it held a lingering mixture of threat and despair.