“Okay…brick wall. But they can get in and out, obviously, since that smug bastard isn’t still down here.” I tap along the wall, it’s the regular kind of brick, with mortar and everything, but it does feel a little off on the left side. It’s not like there’s a door-shaped outline or anything. “On TV, there’d be a secret passage, but…”
But they’re pretty smart. This is an oubliette (which isn’t worth as much in Scrabble as you’d think), and it’s one made by Fae. Fae wouldn’t make leaving a simple matter of pushing a loose brick and dancing out the door to Motown’s greatest hits. No, it’d have to be easy to leave, but only for Fae.
Sigil.
Outside of sorcerers, no one really speaks Sigil. Well, Bards do, but that’s likely why they stuffed me into an air vent instead of keeping me locked up.
But now that I’m out, I can speak Sigil with impunity.
So I’ll get the door open…and then what?
Well, given that I’ve pulled a card trick without needing an actual card…
For an odd reason, I think of Shiko.
She’s the one I filched the card trick from, in exchange for keeping a pretty big secret that, no, I’m not going to share. What I will share is that Kitsune know exactly what they’re doing in the bedroom, and since I’m bi, I really don’t care what their biological gender is. I’ll also share that she mentioned afterward, over noodles, that I was almost as good a lay as my dad.
It was weeks before I could even think about sex again.
Damn Foxes.
It’s common knowledge that the Foxes are wannabe Keth. But they’re tricksters, just like us Coyotes, and what occurred to me, pretty much while Shiko was on top of me, was that that was the trick. That was the trick that Kitsune learned from their Emerald. They learned to trick reality itself into thinking they were Keth, just long enough to work magic.
So if I filched that trick from the Foxes…why can’t I do that?
I don’t have to be right. I just have to believe it long enough.
It’s dark. They brought me down here, I still had my clothes. I never leave home without my cards…
Well, actually, I didn’t have them when the car crashed—
No. I never leave home without my cards. Ever.
“Sora.” So they would be right in my pocket. I reach down and feel the bulge in my back pocket, but it’s bigger than I remember. I fish out a thick deck of cards. My Tarot cards.
Then I throw up.
Luckily, I don’t do it on the cards; it’s kinda nasty. This is likely Fate’s little way of letting me know that she’s not cool with her favored children coloring outside the lines. But I don’t really see a lot of options here if I want to escape.
The whole point to getting my cards is that, that’s how the Kitsune’s tricks work, only they use strips of paper while I’ve got my fifty-two assistants. Thing is, Tarot cards are based on playing cards, or maybe the other way around, but now I’ve got the entire major arcana to work with, as well as the regular stuff.
So I shuffle through and pull out a card, because that’s the way things work, and with a blind draw, I’ll believe I pulled the right one, because I need to have pulled the right one.
“The Sun— Holy fuck, that’s too damned bright!” Seriously, the whole place is lit up like, well, a sunny day, the card practically burning with light. I stuff it back in the deck, the light then extinguished. Thank God for small favors, right?
I pull another card. “The Moon.”
Much better, though all it does is make me think of Selah, who tried to pass herself off as a moon goddess to swindle poor, innocent Coyotes into doing her bidding, and to make sure they never had a decent relationship. At least I can finally see. Well, sort of, as there’re big blocks of my vision that are blurred while my retinas recover from the Sun card.
It’s best if I don’t linger too long on how I’m doing all of this, because this is A-1 trickster shit going down and, no matter my boasting, I’m not that good.
I look toward the brick wall and return to my original plan, now armed for anything that might be on the other side. If the door, hypothetically, responds to Sigil, it should just take a simple command.
“Open.”
The wall groans, the bricks sliding and grunting and scraping as the door swings outward to what appears to be a sitting room on the other side. I draw the Knight of Swords and move through the doorway before that brick wall changes its mind.
The room is decently sized, about as big as a living room for most people, with hoity-toity chairs that are named after monarchs, along with tapestries on the walls, sconces with oil lamps, rugs on the floor that are rather plush and probably took someone decades to make. The ceiling’s high, having a hanging chandelier with lit candles. The wall slides closed behind me, melding almost perfectly with everything else, the kind of secret door you’d have to look for hours to find if you didn’t know it was there.
Oh, and there’s a sidhe, on his knees, the same prick who locked me in the air vent. His face is bruised, but placid, and his eyes have some fear in them. It’s because my father is standing behind him, holding a gun to the Fae’s head.
Dad chuffs at my sudden appearance, turning his head just enough to keep me and his prisoner in view.
“Spencer. About time you got yourself out of there. This one didn’t want to share how to open the door.” He smirks down at the Fae. “Guess I don’t need him anymore, and Granny Atropos ain’t too wild about folk who live past the point of usefulness.” My father looks at me, still keeping that smile. “Close your eyes, son, I’d rather you didn’t have to see this.”
“Dad, no! Please don’t kill him.”
“Yes,” the sidhe quickly follows. “You cannot imagine the consequences. Show mercy and I will allow the both of you to leave.”
My father glances at me, and I look to him, pleadingly. The Coyote nudges the sidhe to glance in my direction. “See that? That’s my boy, right there. Doesn’t want to kill anyone, shows mercy. Just a good kid.” There’s pride on his face as he continues. “Gets that from his mother, you know.”
He taps the barrel of the gun against the Fae’s head. “Now you, you took him, scared the hell out of him, imprisoned him, and were planning to use him, my son, in your bullshit politics. Hell, you probably would’ve killed him anyway if I hadn’t shown up, right?”
He whips the sidhe with the butt of the gun. “Right? C’mon, Knife Ear, you can tell the truth or I can pull the trigger.”
“Dad, stop it!”
“Yes.” The Fae spits out some blue blood. “We would’ve killed him once we had the Riordan.”
Dad snickers at the reply, even as I feel my knees go weak. He lowers the gun, but that fact is still obscured to the Fae. “And you know what, sidhe? I’ll lay good money Spence would still spare you because, to him, killing you wouldn’t solve anything.”
Dad looks at me, meeting my gaze. “My son, the child of the only woman I ever really loved. He wouldn’t kill you because, at the end of the day, he wouldn’t want to be you.” He smiles warmly at me, proudly. “And my son wouldn’t dare sink to your level.”
Both the sidhe and I breathe a sigh of relief.
The Coyote levels the gun back on the sidhe. Pulls the hammer back.
“But I will.”
I close my eyes.
He pulls the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ozzie
December 20, 1:10 pm
The Palace of Wisdom is probably one of the better-known hotspots in Allora. Built in an old movie palace, it’s a nightclub run by a god, Pan, to be particular, and staffed largely by satyrs and nymphs. The line (jokingly referred to as the “Path of Excess”) is interminable, to say the least, and I’m hardly special enough to skip ahead and wait for judgment by the bouncers.
The
place is pretty popular with the mythics and supernaturals, as a place to both let off steam and network. Case in point, I’m pretty sure that a fellow twin-blood, likely a half-troll woman, is chatting up a werewolf male as we all wait to get in. I don’t follow the Gryphons but apparently they’re both in firm agreement that they need a good fullback or at least a better tight end.
Hey, just because we’re not technically human doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy the pastimes. We’re still American. I just prefer college ball. Hook ’em Horns.
The half-troll and wolf get waved in. Figures. So I end up face-to-crotch with a satyr nearly seven feet tall that’s built like a brick shithouse and is not wearing a whit of attire.
Yes sir, I’m definitely bi.
“What’re you lookin’ for, Dwarf?” He waggles himself as he talks, of course. No one, by the way, ever scores with either of the bouncers. Yep, twins. Identical in every foot-long throbbing way. They apparently just love teasing the ones who see them as they are. Fae, even twin-bloods, are supposed to be welcome here.
“Just lookin’ for someone to talk to, is all.” I shrug, try to keep my eyes off his pecker, but when it’s at eye level that’s a pretty damned tall order.
“You’ll have to check the piece.” He points at the collapsed staff. “You know the rules.” No combat in the club, you take it outside. Everyone’s usually too stoned, drunk or horny to bother with fighting in there, though.
The twin sneers at me. “And next time wash the damned Keth stink off ya.” The satyr rolls his eyes and jerks with his thumb toward the door.
I probably should mention that sorcerers are particularly hated by satyrs, considering, as the story goes, a Ra’keth cursed their god, who is still cursed to this day. They’re hardly going to fault me for my “lapse in judgment”. That would go against their code.
The coat check is in the ticket booth in the lobby, run by a rather stunning young woman with pale skin, blonde hair (this year, at least) and visible fangs. I don’t have a coat, but I unclip the staff from my belt and pass it through the window. She takes it without comment, and hands me a card with a number and a silhouette of a sword on it. Yep, that casual about checking weapons. Stone only knows what kind of arsenal’s back there.
“You see a girl with blue hair go in there?” I ask the coat-check girl, figuring she’d probably have seen something. Dragons aren’t known for noticing the little people, but that doesn’t mean they’re forgettable themselves. I take out my wallet, put down a twenty.
She takes the bill and drops it in the tip jar with the other bills, business cards and scraps of paper with numbers. “You think I’m going to tell a Dwarf whether I’ve seen a dragon?”
I blink. How would she know that a girl with blue hair is a dragon? “Didn’t you just do that?”
She points to the main doors leading to the club floor. “At least you’re not stupid.”
“Any hints where to start looking?”
She grins, showing her fangs. “Not for a Jackson, no. Maybe if you introduced me to his brothers. Two or three of them.”
“Sorry, darlin’, I don’t think Andy’s into threesomes.” I drop another bill down in front of her. “But I read that Benny here was quite a tomcat in his day.”
She smirks. “There is something about a dirty old man…” She takes the bill and puts it in the jar. “She came in three hours ago, smelled pretty pissed off. Probably at the bar. Go ask Darren, he’s on the Arcadian side tonight, his info’s cheaper than mine.”
I take the info and go, opening the doors and descending the stairs to the dance floor. Plenty of people down here, mythics too. I’m thankful my nose isn’t too sensitive, otherwise one whiff would probably knock me on my ass and get me stoned as a Deadhead. The club has two bars on the right and left of the central dance floor, the stage of the theater having a concert space that’s currently filled by a DJ, another satyr, with glowsticks hanging from his horns.
I stay on the periphery for the vantage point, checking the right side, also called the Arcadian side (the left is called the Grove). I would think that blue hair would stand out, but with all the lights, music and smoke, it’s a pain in the ass seeing anyone’s hair color for sure.
“Anyone seen a girl with blue hair?” At least I can bellow. Time’s a wastin’ here. I am loud enough to be heard over the music, and while I get more than a few dirty looks for interrupting their delicately crafted mysterious moods, a weretiger with a French-Canadian accent jabs his finger toward a booth a few yards away and punctuates it with a comment in French that I’m guessing isn’t all that neighborly.
At least I didn’t have to pay anyone.
The crowd isn’t as thick as I move away from the bar, though I do have to navigate between newly minted couples, trios and quartets to find my way to the booth.
She’s alone, her hair remaining a deep cerulean despite the constantly shifting color of the lights. At first glance, had I not known her nature, I’d have pegged her as being from the university and recently having discovered retro-punk chic, what with the torn jeans, spiked bracelets and distressed Ramones T-shirt. Her gun belt is empty, likely checked, and she’s taking a long pull from a bottle of Glen McKenna when I come into view.
Her reaction is muted, for a dragon, when she smashes the bottle and points the broken remnant at me. “Fuck off, Dreamblood.”
At least she didn’t break any doors. Still, busting a bottle of expensive scotch does draw attention. I immediately put up my hands, palms open. “Relax, darlin’, I just want to ask a couple questions.”
“And then what, you’ll cut off my head to temper your freshly forged blade?” Yeah, us Dwarves used to do that. Not me, at any time, and we haven’t done it in ages. But dragons have long memories and short tempers, according to the stories and the advice from Dave.
“Here? In the middle of the Palace, you think I managed to sneak in a Fae-steel blade?” I snort at that. “Besides, it’d only work if you were in your true form. Plus now we temper blades with water. Lot cheaper. All I want to know is where the Ra’keth is, and how to get there.”
Security at the Palace comprises a seven-foot satyr with a leather harness, a scourge with silver tips and a cigar he hand-rolls. “There a problem?”
“No, sir, none at all. Just askin’ the lady a couple questions.” I keep my hands up, tone even and respectful. Respect goes a long way.
“This fucking dreamblood is bothering me and I’ve told him to leave.” She tics her head toward the door. “Toss him out.”
The satyr folds his arms and grumbles lowly. “I was going to. Then you presumed to command me. We also don’t appreciate language such as that in this establishment.” He motions to me, the scourge gently tapping my shoulder. “Given our relationship with the Tolon Duchy, slurs against the Fae, or any mythic for that matter, are not tolerated. Twin-bloods are also offered sanctuary, given they treat our establishment with the proper respect.” The satyr lightly taps my shoulder again. “This one has followed the rules and shown respect, and you have not. Answer his question, or the Ra’saar will be informed that dragons will not be welcome here for two seasons.”
“I asked him to leave, Goat Horn.”
“Four seasons. Say that word again, and it extends to permanency.”
Understandably, I take a step away, but I only find my back against his furry thigh. “Stay there, Dwarf.”
“Yes, sir.” The Stone never told anyone to be stupid.
Clearly, the dragon is fuming, though in her case sparks fly from her nostrils, as she’s the lightning-breathing type. Deliberately, she sets down the broken bottle and takes a long, deep breath. “I offer apologies for my offense and would…” she grits her teeth, “…respectfully request that punishment only be levied against me. I will accept a ban if necessary.”
“And the Dwarf’s question?”
She folds h
er arms. “You understand that I do not wish to share a Ra’keth’s location with one whose liege bears a grudge against my race’s protectorate?”
“My Lord has no quarrel with the Lightning Rod, only the Recluse. He prefers to let sorcerers dig their own graves. They rarely need help doing so.” The satyr taps my shoulder to put the attention back on me. “Now answer his question. Where is the Lightning Rod?”
The dragon smiles wickedly at me. “Another realm, where none but the Keth and the dragons may go.”
The satyr hmmphs at that. “Good. Now I trust you can find your way out. You may return in four seasons.” I’m nudged forward, and I turn around to look up at him as the dragon makes her exit. “She’ll likely run straight back to her masters. Perhaps you could follow.”
I nod quickly. “Thank you, sir.”
“You do realize it never ends well for one of us when we chase a sorcerer? Love sours all too quickly with them.”
I blink, not knowing how to take that. “Were…were you?”
“My Lord. Even the gods can fall victim to human emotion. He is reminded of his mistake every day. Now go.”
I don’t need any more encouragement, and luckily getting out of the club is far easier than getting in. Just a matter of collecting my staff and chasing the dragon outside. She’s heading down the street, toward a parked car, an electric-blue Camaro from the eighties.
“Hey!” Despite my short legs, it’s not that hard to catch up with her.
“I answered your question, Dreamblood, and out here you are not under anyone’s protection.” She faces me. “Out here I could change, bite you in half, and those ignorant sheep would see nothing more than you being crushed by an out-of-control truck.”
“You really don’t like humans, do you?”
“Only the Keth are worthy among them, and His Majesty has granted my kind a favor by only allowing one member of the human race to be worthy of our respect.”
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