Trey’s fiery gaze locked onto mine and he stopped moving, just for a second. In his eyes I saw rage, but as he looked at me, it was as if recognition had dawned and behind that rage emerged a black fear. “You,” he said.
I blinked.
Then he kicked.
I managed to evade with a small slide to the right. My right fist curled, but I was not going to hit a skinny teenager, even a crazed, combative one. But Not-Rocky, who’d also run over, didn’t have that restraint. He reached forward and thrust a glove into Trey’s gut. It wasn’t the kind of hit that would drop anyone else here, but Trey blew a hard breath out of his mouth and stopped struggling.
“Stop,” Smiley said. “Everyone knock it the hell off. You,” he said, pointing at Not-Rocky. “We don’t hit kids here.”
“Sorry, sir.” Not-Rocky did look sorry. It wasn’t a hard hit, and I didn’t really blame him for stopping the fight in the only way most of us here knew how.
“You,” Smiley said to me. “Go in my office for ice. Take care of your face.”
“Okay,” I said, and I moved aside, but I didn’t go anywhere.
“You’re done,” Smiley said to Trey, who was doubled over, not looking at him. “Everyone in here has got a second chance at some point, but they don’t get a third, and neither do you. You leave this gym and do not come back. Ever. If you do, I’m tossing you in the ring and letting one of these guys have at you. Just see if I’m joking.”
No answer.
“Do you understand me?”
Trey raised his head, and despite his obvious pain, and despite being restrained by a heavyweight champion, and despite being outnumbered, he narrowed his eyes and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
Shirley gave him a threatening shake but Smiley said mildly, “Let him go. He’s leaving.”
Shirley shoved Trey in the direction of the door. He shuffled a few steps, but then he stopped, turned and glared at me. “It’s you. I know.”
“I don’t see you leaving,” Smiley said. “And the ring’s free.”
What happened to this boy? Did he think I was someone else, someone who’d hurt him? I didn’t remember ever saying anything more than hello to him. I hadn’t done anything to offend him.
Troubled child. Maybe mentally ill. He seemed to be waiting for a response but I just shook my head at him. He backed away, then ran out the door.
“What the freaking hell?” Not-Rocky said. Shirley rubbed my shoulder, then shrugged and went over to the heavy bag as if this had all been nothing more than a blip in his schedule. Smiley did the same, slipping into his office.
I turned and saw Svein. I’d forgotten he was there, because he’d only watched the events unfold. A fae, unable to jump in and fight. I twisted my mouth. “Weird.”
“That it was,” he replied, and didn’t seem to want or need to say anything more about it.
I stuffed my own gloves into my gym bag, and zipped a purple fleece sweatshirt over my tank top. It was warm enough to get away with my black shorts, but I changed into street sneakers while Svein and Not-Rocky chatted. “See you tomorrow,” I told my sparring partner.
Svein bent over and lifted my bag onto his shoulder. I let him, and we emerged into the city sun.
He turned left on 9th Street rather than right, away from the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station I usually used to go home, and toward Mt. Vernon Square. I decided to let him have his way, for the time being. We walked along in silence for a while.
“His name is Dr. Riley Clayton,” Svein finally said. “D.M.D.”
D.M.D.? “A dentist.” I stopped short. “The threat is a dentist.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
One dry, silent laugh escaped from my open mouth, and my chest heaved to expel it. I shook my head and looked at the sky. “That’s what this is? That’s why I’ve been called to action?”
“A threat is a threat,” Svein said.
“No,” I said. “It’s not. This is bullshit.” I pressed my palms to the sides of my head. “I went to a fae meeting the night I discovered my—who—what I am. We all joined hands and I didn’t connect to the Olde Way and groove with peace and nature like everyone else. Instead, I had some kind of acid trip that blew me back in time, into the bodies of warriors past. A warrior who burned down the house of a dark witch. A warrior in a prison camp, who died. And the warrior who chose, forever, morning over midnight.”
I laughed again, hard and mirthless. “And this is what I’m risking everything I care about for? A dentist with a bad attitude?”
“Gemma…”
I stepped closer to him and set my jaw. “This isn’t a destiny. This is a joke, and an insult, not only to me but to those who came before me. If this were a movie, this would be the point where I leave the theater.” I threw up my hands and turned away from him.
I was supposed to walk away now. Why wasn’t I?
Behind me, Svein said, “This is where we live. In the twenty-first century in a safe, democratic civilization. We don’t kill people to take their land, and we don’t have to take down woolly mammoths to eat. There’s no war on our soil, at least for now. You are the warrior of this time and place, and to help us, you won’t have to run through a forest with a spear. You might not need to do anything violent at all, and I’m sorry if that disappoints you. We don’t know what we’re up against. But it’s something, and it’s getting worse every day, and we can’t get to it without you.”
I opened my mouth and before I could speak, he said, “It’s the dark fae. It’s always the dark fae, always with a different weapon. This guy, he’s the weapon this time.”
It embarrassed me to have been disappointed that my fight didn’t seem to be a major one.
“Besides,” Svein added, “I haven’t told you everything yet.”
I turned back to him. “Fine, let’s go. Wherever we’re going.”
We walked in silence. I was grateful to be left alone to smooth out my thoughts, but after about a block, I said, “Wouldn’t all dentists be our natural enemies?”
“No,” Svein said, amused. “In fact, they’re unwittingly useful to us if they can get kids to brush and floss their teeth.”
“So why’s this Clayton guy a threat? And how could he even be a threat unless he knows the fae exist and what we’re up to? I thought humans weren’t on to us as anything other than bedtime stories.”
“That’s the thing,” Svein said. “Clayton is fae.”
I stopped short. “A fae dentist?” I thought of both instances where I’d touched a tooth—with Frederica and at Watergate—and I’d lapsed into an Olde Way mini-coma. “How can he be around kids’ teeth all day and not be passed out on the floor every second?”
“A fae dentist isn’t unheard of,” Svein said, steering me gently by my shoulder to the curb after a woman, encumbered with supermarket bags, huffed angrily around us. “But most of them treat adults. There are a few fae specializing in pediatric dentistry who do their part by donating teeth from routine extractions. They also help kids keep their teeth healthy for us. They bind some of their abilities in the Butterfly Room so they can work without passing out on the floor all day.”
“So if Dr. Clayton is one of those fae …“
“He’s not. He has nothing to do with our collection process.”
“But he’s fae. Can’t you make him give you teeth if he has them?”
“We operate on free will,” Svein said. “Even you—as much of a pain in the ass as you are—chose this.”
“What fae wouldn’t?” Again, I tried to remember the light and colors and purity of the visions I had when I held the teeth, and instead felt it humming inside me, moving with my blood, pumping in and out of my heart. I slowed to a stop and breathed with it.
“It’s a rush,” Svein said, moving to stand in front of me.
“It’s more than a rush. It’s alive in me.”
Even standing
inches apart, it seemed we were locked in an embrace stronger and warmer than if we’d used our arms. The city I’d always thought silent fell away, and I realized I didn’t know what silence was until I truly heard it—actually heard nothing. My gaze locked with Svein’s and I saw it in him, and I knew he saw it in me, an eternity of peace and love. He blinked slowly and deliberately, his lashes sweeping the tender skin below his silvery eyes.
He reached out and stroked my hair, his fingers coming to rest on my chin.
A dog’s snappy bark snapped me into reality—into human reality. As the little dachshund and his harried-looking female walker dashed past, I blinked myself back into the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, its grittier townhouses and Section Eight housing a world away from where I’d just been in my mind. I stepped back. Afraid that if I looked at his face again I’d be pulled back into the daze, and afraid that I wanted to, I began to walk again, and he fell into quiet step beside me.
We turned onto K Street and the moment was, thankfully, gone.
“The Olde Way,” he said, softly, “is the reason we all do it. So –“
I finished his question. “Why wouldn’t Dr. Clayton?”
“That, my Gemma,” he said, “was the million-dollar question.”
“Was?”
“I found out he renounced his identity and upbringing. He’s got nothing to do with fae any longer.”
I thought for a minute. “Did he bind his abilities to masquerade as a full human?”
“There’s no record at any of our headquarters, here or abroad, of a transformation.”
“Well, then,” I said, a candy bar wrapper crackling under my sneaker, “all you know is that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with us. Doesn’t mean he’s actively working against us.”
“Some months ago,” Svein said, “it was discovered at The Root that we had an inordinate number of collected teeth that were depleted.”
“Depleted?”
“Depleted of essence. They’re dead teeth, useless to us. When collections realized they were getting only the shells, I began an investigation.”
We turned again, and I headed toward Metro Center, but Svein steered me away from the station and further down the street. I didn’t bother to interrupt his story with a protest.
“Using school health reports and other records we happen to have access to, I found the common denominator. Every single D.C.-area child who yielded one or more dead teeth is a patient of Dr. Riley Clayton.”
I wrinkled my brow and twisted my mouth. “He’s killing their teeth?”
“In a manner of speaking. He’s draining them of essence somehow. He’s renounced his fae heritage. So something tells me he’s got a big grudge against us, so big that he’s draining the teeth deliberately to thwart the goal we all work toward.”
“But how could he physically do that?” I asked. “I thought fae had no capability for violence, and I would say that killing the essence in baby teeth is an act of violence. It puts him on the offensive, and fae can’t do that.”
“Unless he’s a fallen fae.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he aligned with midnight fae to turn him into a demon, a being with some fae abilities—and the capacity to indulge in violence.”
“So midnight fae are evil.”
“The midnight fae depend on our existence, as we do on theirs,” Svein said. “Without us, they don’t survive. For our light, we need their darkness. Both sides recognize the necessary symbiosis. But our side has warriors, and some dark fae in power see this as an imbalance that they need to set right. So they strike where we are the strongest, and the most vulnerable: the Olde Way collection.”
“Any chance Clayton is acting alone?”
“I don’t see why he would, though I would prefer that to be the case. We’re hoping to not cross the midnight fae,” Svein said, his mouth tightening into a thin line. “We can’t afford to stir up suspicion in the underworld since we can’t fight whomever might take umbrage. I’m not saying this to insult you, but you’re not enough to do that for us.”
“So instead, you brought me in to deal with Doc Clayton alone. What’s the assurance that he won’t figure me out and call on the midnight fae to annihilate my ass?”
“There is none. But look at the bright side. Fighting a demon—that changes things, doesn’t it? You might be in it as deep as your ancestors were after all.”
My mother’s deepest fear, the reason she had hidden me from my destiny, was because my destiny might just include a fight I couldn’t win.
Now that it was reality, it was my deepest fear. It sparked inside my gut and shook me to my core. Breathe and accept just wasn’t going to do it.
Svein sensed it and pushed me down a narrow alley. He pinned both my shoulders to the side of a building. “Breathe,” he ordered.
“Can’t.”
“Accept.”
“No.”
He kissed me.
It was hot and hard and insistent, and I surrendered to it almost immediately, sliding my hands inside his jacket to grab two fistfuls of his T-shirt. My shoulders relaxed, my back muscles released, and then I had to pull away but couldn’t, so I pushed him with all my force.
He stumbled back but caught himself quickly. His breathing was shallow, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him rattled. Which was some kind of victory, I supposed.
I bent over, propping my hands on my knees. “That can’t happen,” I said to the sidewalk. “That—can’t happen.”
He didn’t respond, but his breathing quieted. After a few minutes, he said, “Fight or flight.”
“Excuse me?”
“Seems that as a warrior, those are your two options. When you sense danger, you can literally go into fight or flight mode. Human or fae.”
“I don’t want to fly.”
“You do have wings.”
“I’m keeping them decorative,” I said, staying bent over but lifting my head.
“You can fly right now, if you feel like you need to.”
At first, I thought he meant I could fly away from this coiled and heated-up tension between us, but then I realized he meant the threat. My new enemy. Riley Clayton, fallen fae. Demon.
Svein was giving me permission to back out.
I didn’t want to get hurt, or die. If I backed out now, I’d get my life back. I could take a visit to the Butterfly Room and shed my wings for good, go home and live happily ever after with hopefully-soon-to-be U.S. Rep. Avery McCormack.
And Dr. Clayton would continue to poison the D.C. collection, and for all I knew, he had other people helping him, or a grander plan. He endangered the Olde Way’s return, and the morning fae, after generations and generations of labor, would be set back again.
“You’re human, Gemma,” my dad said, as I slammed a tiny fist into a pad, into the center of his palm. “You’re human.”
He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t deal with the fae life, and he had left.
That was why I would not back out.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked Svein, straightening up and stretching my spine. He’d sat on the curb while I was in thinking mode, and he squinted up at me.
“Knew you hadn’t lost your fight.”
“I panicked,” I said, “but that isn’t the same as quitting. And next time I panic, try to find some other way of chilling me out. This was—was—inappropriate.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, standing.
“Stop laughing at me.”
“Believe me, I’m not laughing.”
It was true, he wasn’t, but I needed to beat this into the ground for the last time. Svein couldn’t think we could just manhandle one another and it would be okay. It was un-okay. Avery and I were okay, and I intended for it to stay okay.
Despite all my recent lying and sneaking around.
We headed around the corner and Svein said, “Stop.”
“What?” I asked.
He casually leaned agai
nst the lamppost and surveyed the landscape, which consisted of dense late-day traffic. I thought about how the first time I’d seen him, he was leaning against a lamppost.
Wait. This lamppost.
I looked across Franklin Square, its new greenery a urban oasis. Yup, that’s where I had been standing. Just after my tooth cleaning. I pointed at the medical building.
“That’s where my dentist’s office is.”
“That’s why I was here, doing a little surveillance.”
“On me?”
“No, but you were quite the distraction.” He smirked and I wanted to slap it off his face. “I was trying to get a glimpse of Clayton.”
“And you thought he’d be here?”
“Dr. Gold just retired, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, and –“ Light dawned. “Dr. Clayton’s the one taking over?”
“His practice was across town but he wanted something bigger for more patients or more whatever the hell he’s doing. Coincidentally, you’re now his patient.”
“Coincidentally? No way. There are a lot of dentists’ offices in a city this size. He must have known…”
He cut me off. “I agree, but we can’t afford to waste time looking for the connection. You need to get in there.”
“Too bad we didn’t have this conversation last week. My next cleaning’s not for six months.”
“Funny. Make an appointment, get in there and see what’s going on.”
“You make an appointment,” I said. “One of your front teeth is a little crooked anyway. Might as well kill two birds.”
“Fae know fae,” he said. “If I get within twenty feet of him, he’ll know I’m fae, and he’ll know I became a new patient to scope him out.”
“Then he’ll sniff me out too, won’t he?”
“Probably not,” he said. “You’re half-human, and your scent is different. You should fly right under the radar, so to speak.”
I started to ask him why, if the dentist wouldn’t recognize me for what I was, the fae at the group meeting did, but I mentally answered my own question. I’d arrived with Frederica, and humans didn’t attend those meetings, and if I smelled like something other than a true fae, then they instantly knew what I was.
Tooth and Nail Page 14