If Burns had checked my pulse, then he and Reid woke up at least a full minute before I had. More like five, if they’d had time to fire up the portal in the oak tree and beat it back to Faery. Of course, there was another possibility.
“Did the magic knock y’all out?” I asked.
Reid scratched beneath his nose again. “No.”
“Why me and not you?”
“You’re human. We’re not,” Reid said.
Okay. “So what did you see when it went down?”
Burns hugged himself. “That girl—”
“Melody,” I said.
“She lit up like the fuse on a bottle rocket. Flames. Sparks. The whole nine. Then she went black on the inside. Like an old photo negative. Like a shadow. And she disappeared. Up and vanished. Left an outline of fire that burned out a second after she was gone. Then nothing.”
“Except for her shoes,” Reid said.
I remembered. Her broken red pumps. “She up and poofed and that’s all you’ve got?”
Burns nodded. “That’s all there was.”
“You couldn’t tell where she went?”
“Not without further investigation,” he said.
“Spoken like a cop.”
“Keeping up appearances, Mr. Davies.”
There were appearances and then there were appearances. They pretended to be cops, but they weren’t. They weren’t even cops in Faery. More like informants or watchers of some kind. In this case, they’d come to see me. To talk to me.
Burns and Reid had seen Melody vanish and then they’d hightailed it to check in with the King. They hadn’t investigated any further because of what’d happened before with the monsters. Maybe they’d missed something.
Kevin cleared his throat. “What exactly did you tell the King?”
“We gave him a play-by-play of what happened. He sent us back here. Told us not to return until the problem was solved,” Reid said.
Burns met Kevin’s gaze. “Not just us. He sent the Singer back, too. She has orders to work with you until the world’s put right again.”
Amy spoke through clenched teeth. “I wish there was some other way.”
“It’s not up to you,” Burns said. “Or Kevin or us or even the Singer herself. Orders are orders. Besides, the King sealed the borders of Faery. No one in or out until this is over with.”
“Has that ever happened before?” Kevin asked. “The King sealing the borders?”
Burns shook his head. “Not in my memory.”
“How long’s your memory, man?”
“Six hundred seventy-three years.”
“No way,” Amy said.
Burns cracked a half smile. “It’s never happened in my memory. I’ve never heard of it. Not ever.”
That made it a huge deal. A one-in-a-million thing. Which meant the King was more than concerned. He was fucking terrified. And doing what he figured he needed to do to protect his people.
“When you said monsters before, what exactly did you mean by that?” I asked.
Burns’s smile faded. “Whatever power we had drove us crazy, and by crazy, I mean homicidal, in some cases what you’d call psychopathic. It was worse for the ones with the most magic—the King, the Queen, the ones with the strongest gifts. Horrible things were done. So many died badly. There were…mutations. The way they looked, acted—it all changed. We couldn’t cure the infection. We had to cut it out. You understand what I mean?”
“You killed the monsters,” I said.
His tone turned bitter. “Every last one.”
“Including the King and Queen?”
“Especially them. The royals you know are relatively new. If you’d still consider somebody new after three hundred seventy-five years on the throne.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
“Many of us lost our lives in the process.”
I could imagine—actually, I could do more than that. I could read the devastation in the lines around his eyes and the downturn of his mouth. I could look beyond those things and see a river of blood in my mind’s eye and feel the suffering that lay behind it. It was a seer thing.
“So the King locked everything down to keep that from happening again,” I said. “Is he sure he did it in time?”
“He acted as quickly as he could,” Burns said. “That’s all we know.”
“And once we get this mess under control, he’ll reopen the way.”
Burns inclined his head. “Far as we know.”
Kevin fidgeted. “So what now, Rude?”
He wasn’t the only one looking at me. They all were. “We still need to get the others. And now we need to head downtown to get the Singer, too. And I want to go back to the scene of the crime and check things out again. See if we can find some clues I was too wrecked to notice before. Am I missing anything?”
“What about going to the girl’s house?” Burns asked. “There might be clues there as to what happened or why she did what she did.”
“She doesn’t have a house,” Amy said. “That whole thing with her stepfather? Melody’s mom took his side. She kicked her own daughter to the curb.”
“Over that asshole?” Kevin thinned his lips.
“Yeah,” she said. “Melody’s staying with a friend, but I’m not sure which one.”
“So checking her house is out,” I said. “At least for now.”
She nodded.
“I know you didn’t want to before,” Kevin said, “but we really should split up. We can cover more ground faster. You check near where Melody went nuclear. Burns and Reid here can fetch Stacy, Scott, and Mr. Nance if he wants to come.”
Which he might not, given that the Singer avoided him and their last meeting had basically been goodbye. She was his daughter, but she’d changed so much—from one-hundred-percent rebellious human girl who sang in a band to one-hundred-percent faery in service to the King.
I noticed neither Burns nor Reid complained about being voluntold where to go.
“I should get the Singer,” Kevin said.
Amy stood up. “And me?”
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
She shook her head. “What good would I be there? I mean, I could hold your hand and claim my territory, but I can’t make you mine if you don’t want to be. That’s up to you, Kev. I want to be useful. You and Rude have magic. So do Stacy and the Singer. Scott and me, we’re the only ones who don’t. Which makes us liabilities. I don’t want to be one of those.”
It made sense she would feel that way. The way she’d been in the car, so angry with Kevin. The glimpse I’d gotten of how fragile she was, how close to the edge she teetered. One shove could make her fall. One push could break her.
Kev swallowed hard. “What do you have in mind?”
“I want to look for Melody,” she said. “She’s my friend.”
“She blew up,” Burns said.
“That’s not what you said. You said she disappeared.”
“Same thing.”
“No. It makes a difference. It matters. If she vanished, then she’s somewhere.”
“Maybe not in this world,” Kevin said.
Amy’s hands fisted at her side. “Maybe not. But if she is, I stand the best chance of finding her. I could help her.”
“Or she could go all fiery again and kill you,” Kevin said.
“She won’t hurt me.”
“She hurt Rude.”
“She could’ve melted me like the steering wheel. But she didn’t,” I said.
“Eyes,” Kevin said.
“Wings,” I countered. “Damage is done.”
“I’m going to go,” Amy said. “I just need a way to get around. Mr. Landon, can I borrow your car?”
Before his dad could answer, Kevin jumped in. “It might be better for you to take him with you.”
“Someone has to stay at home base,” Mr. Landon said. “She should go with one of the officers.”
Kevin’s jaw dropped. “You’re not serio
us, Dad?”
His dad didn’t answer. He just looked at Kev. His chin shook.
The guy had gotten in way over his head before, with the King. He’d made it back home, with whatever sanity he could grab onto, only because Kevin had big enough brass to challenge the King and enough brains and luck to sort of win. Maybe Mr. Landon couldn’t handle another trip like this.
Kevin averted his eyes.
Amy’s voice broke the small silence. “I can take care of myself.”
Kev thought for a minute. “Then wait until we get Stacy and Scott. Go with them.”
“Like you mentioned, we can cover more ground if we split up. Wouldn’t it be better to find Melody sooner than later?” she asked.
Kevin met my gaze. “Rude? Your intuition rang mad alarm bells about splitting up before.”
I tried to summon the bad feeling I’d had, but it wouldn’t come. Not even a little bit. “Amy will be all right.”
Kev didn’t look convinced.
“Look, all this arguing’s only delaying the inevitable,” Amy said.
She’d go one way or another. We couldn’t stop her.
I pushed away from the wall. “Fine. But I think you should take a bike instead of a car. There’s too many abandoned cars in the middle of the road that you’d have to stop and push out of the way, you know?”
Amy looked at Mr. Landon.
“It’s in the garage,” he said.
“Great. Then it’s settled.” She rubbed her palms on her jeans and stepped over to Kevin. Kissed him softly. “See you back here later.”
“Be careful, Amy.”
“You, too.” She headed for the garage via the kitchen.
“I love you,” he said.
She flashed him a lopsided grin and gave him her best The Empire Strikes Back answer. “I know.”
A few minutes later, we watched her pedal east down the street, hair flowing behind her. The picture window in Kev’s living room framed her for half a minute. She glanced over her shoulder at the bunch of us and waved.
“Burns, you need addresses?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We know where all of you live. Where you spend your time.”
In any other circumstances, that would be not at all reassuring. Now, though? “Bring them back here.”
“And then?” Reid asked. “What’s next?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out.”
CHAPTER FIVE
We took the freeway downtown while the dog panted in the back seat. The off-ramp dropped us onto a one-way street among one- and two-story warehouses and wholesale fabric stores. Cans and broken bottles littered both sides of the road. The air stank of sulfur and exhaust. From what—abandoned cars? Hardly. I mean, there were a few. But Sunday afternoon didn’t translate to a ton of vehicles in this part of downtown. It made for easy driving until the buildings started to get taller.
Glass and steel office towers, in abundance. Usually, shiny and whole. Now the steel was dull and bent and a lot of the glass busted out, shiny shards coating the streets and sidewalks. I hoped like crazy we wouldn’t get a flat.
We saw a man and a woman in the park outside of City Hall. They stood beneath a shattered streetlight. The guy, he looked okay. The woman, though? Half her head was missing. Most of the back half, actually.
“I’m not imagining that, am I?” Kevin asked.
“Not unless I am, too.”
“What’s wrong with her, Rude?”
“Maybe she’s brain damaged?”
“In line with your theory?”
I didn’t want to have a theory that explained something like that. I never wanted to see anything like that again. I didn’t think I’d ever forget it, either. I wanted to help her. I had no idea how except to fix everything.
“Screw my theory.”
I put the pedal to the metal. Concentrated on getting to the alley on the other side of downtown where we’d find the Singer. Normally, she and her bus would be gone, because daylight. She was an after-dark girl, period. But these were special circumstances.
The school bus sat on bald tires at the end of that alley, a single grackle perched on top—what was with the birds?
“Third time I’ve seen those little black birds since all this started,” I said.
“They’re all over town,” Kevin said. “All the time.”
True, but I only noticed them at certain times of year, when they migrated. Or, more accurately, swarmed.
“I don’t like it,” I said.
“It doesn’t seem to have an opinion about you.”
I rolled my eyes and got back to business.
Thank God the bus was back from Faery, just like Burns and Reid had said it would be. Christmas lights twinkled in the half-open windows. Incense smoke wafted from inside. A lot of it. Patchouli, of course.
The Singer opened the door as we got out of the Explorer. Her auburn hair hung in waves that brushed her shoulders. Freckles dusted her nose. Her blue eyes, pupils rimmed in red, looked sad. She grinned at Zach, though.
She wore a peacock-feather halter and black leather pants. Her feet were bare. Her wings snapped out wide to either side of her back. They had that gossamer thing going on. Delicate looking, see-through, with muscle structure and arteries and veins pumping blood. They looked fragile, but they were strong as hell. Like her.
“About time you two got here,” she said.
Just the sound of her voice shook up all my molecules and put them back together again in a different way. I listened carefully and eagerly for the next word. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. My feet rooted in place for a couple of seconds.
Kevin walked past me and up the steps. He wrapped his arms around her in a friendly hug. The way she closed her eyes when he did that told me everything I needed to know as far as how she felt about him.
She pulled away slowly. “What’s up with your shoulders? They’re rippling.”
“That’s not the word I’d use,” he said.
“Kevin?”
“I’ve got some brand new wings.”
“Shit,” she said.
“I know.”
“We have a lot to talk about.” Her gaze moved from Kevin and landed on me. “This is your show, Davies. You’re not looking so hot.”
“It’s been a bad day. Capital B.”
“Not what I mean.” She turned on her heel and went inside.
Kev and I followed.
The smoke inside was so thick it made me cough. The dog let out three rapid sneezes.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s the only thing that keeps the stink out.”
“We caught a whiff coming here, once we got off the freeway,” I said. “What is it?”
“No idea, exactly. But it smells like rot, doesn’t it?”
I nodded. “Can’t be good.”
“No, it can’t. I’ll be right back. Sit. Make yourselves at home.” She headed for the back of the bus.
Sit? The Singer’s oil paintings covered nearly every seat. Freshly tie-dyed skirts and socks laid out to dry took up the rest of available space. Kev and I moved what we could.
“Five bucks says our asses are purple when we get up,” I said.
He didn’t laugh.
The Singer returned with three bottles of water and an empty plastic bowl. She tossed one to each of us, then opened hers and drank half the bottle in a long swig. She poured the rest into the bowl for Zach.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Where’d you find him?”
“Freeway.”
“Lucky.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what would’ve happened to him if I hadn’t come across him.”
“I didn’t mean he was lucky. You were. Are.” She climbed on top of the nearest bench and perched on the seatback.
“He’s a special kind of dog?”
“If you haven’t figured it out by now, Rude, I have no hope for you.”
Sarcasm. And something else underneath it. “What did you
mean with that crack about how I look?”
“You’ve seen your eyes, right?”
I nodded.
“And your skin?”
“What about my skin?”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Full length mirror’s in the back.”
I pushed to my feet and went to look, feeling like I was walking into a fog since the smoke seemed to originate from that direction. I had to move at least five pounds worth of dresses that she’d slung over the glass and blink several times to make sense of my reflection.
I mean, it was still summer as far as the weather was concerned, and I spent some time in the sun, but not nearly enough. I didn’t exactly qualify as pale, but I never got much darker than freckled anyway. All that, I expected. What I got? At least two shades paler than I ought to be. Like someone or something had leached the color from my skin. Against that bleached backdrop, my eyes took on a whole new semblance of scary, creepy, Oh. My. God.
By the time I got back to my seat, I had to sit down carefully so as not to miss it and fall on my ass. I kicked Kevin in the shin.
He winced.
“Dude. You couldn’t have said something?” I asked.
He shrugged. “What did you want me to say? Rude, your freak is getting freakier?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Really?” he asked. “When did you want me to say that? While we were rescuing Amy or while we were at my dad’s?”
“I was like this at Amy’s?”
He met my gaze. “In the car. When Amy and I were fighting.”
I should’ve noticed. Seen my reflection in glass or, for crying out loud, felt it. My intuition should’ve raised an alarm. But it hadn’t. Why hadn’t it?
“I could handle the eyes,” I said. “What is this thing? This new thing?”
“Rude, I hate to break it to you—”
I interrupted. “Burns talked about mutations when this happened before, in Faery. That’s what’s happening now, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the Singer said.
“What am I changing into?”
“Think a minute.”
I didn’t want to think. I wanted her to tell me in her out-loud voice. In fact, my brain felt kind of foggy. Concentrating took extra effort.
Burns had gone on and on about monsters. About the people with the most power going off the reservation completely. Doing things that couldn’t be undone. Horrible things.
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