by Lucy Auburn
“The Elders... know something. About you, Selena.”
She looked down, and I sensed that she’d kept this from us on purpose; it wasn’t news to her. “What do they know?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. “Just tell me. I want to get it over with.”
“In private.”
With a nod of apology to Tae Min and Damen, I took Selena’s elbow and drew her to a space behind my desk. There was a silencing floor tile there, spelled to make a dome of silence around two people who stood on it; something I used from time to time in my position. I gestured for her to stand in front of me, so close that I could feel the heat of her body.
“The tile beneath us will keep this private between the two of us.” Softly, I said, “The Elders know who your mother is: Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, whose mortal daughter was supposed to be dead.” The wince that followed confirmed that she had known this already, which was no surprise. “And they also suspect you might be the Key.”
Her eyebrows rose at this. “But I can’t be the Key. It’s an object, isn’t it? And we found that mirror—”
“The mirror told you ‘I am the Key,’ didn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, confusion in her face.
“It must have been telling you who you are,” I explained to her. “Not what it is. I read what the seers discovered for the Elders; they said that the Key would be revealed at that location, and that you need to be there for the mission. I’m beginning to understand why. The Key was revealed to you, as yourself.”
“No.” The expression in her eyes was of despair. “It explains so much, but it can’t be true.”
I didn’t have the heart to contradict her; I could tell that she was struggling.
Just then the ground beneath us trembled again, and the pounding out in the hallway grew louder. I was just about to say that we might need to check it out—it wasn’t settling down like ogres usually did—when the doors swung open, and a familiar form rushed between them, knives clutched in each of her hands.
“Get down!” Naomi shouted, and I instinctively crouched. As I did so, I heard a buzzing sound above me as half a dozen angry pixies flew into the room. Each had sharp teeth and large wings that moved as fast as a flying insect.
Crouching quickly, I pulled Selena down beside me, her hand warm in my own. “They’re mostly harmless,” I told her. “Just don’t swat at them.”
“Okay.”
I stood up. Damen was readying what looked like electricity in his hands; Tae Min had a strange, sharp look on his face. Hurriedly, I shouted at them, “Don’t attack! I’ll take care of it.”
The demigod reluctantly retreated, while I could’ve sworn Tae Min briefly cocked his head and smirked, wearing a coy expression. There was something going on with him, but I didn’t have the time to figure out what.
I strode into the middle of the room, looking up towards the pixies. Their language was rusty in my mouth as I spoke to them. “Peace! Have peace, and we will share a cup of wine later.”
The little creatures, each of them twice the size of my hand and with sharp wings that could cut skin, milled in the air briefly. Then they nodded, settling one by one on the shelves around us. Pixies were notorious boozehounds; wine was a favorite of theirs, but they were bad at fermentation, and so relied on others to provide them with a fix. As much as I disliked them drunk, they were always far more placid that way than when they were sober.
Further down the hallway outside, my secretary was lassoing the orge, who was seven feet tall and mostly harmless. He went down quickly, falling beneath the sleeping spell of the rope that held him. I thanked the skies that ogres were mostly dumb and ornery rather than aggressive.
But he never should’ve escaped in the first place.
“Naomi.” I turned to face the dark hunter as she closed the doors behind her. She eyed the pixies with a dark expression, her knives at the ready. “Put those things away. I’ve made peace with them.”
“Very well.” She reluctantly sheathed her knives, then looked at each of us with a narrow-eyed expression; I could tell she was hiding something, but didn’t know what. “By the way, it turns out that mirror we found isn’t the Key. It tells you stuff for some reason, but that’s all.”
I gave Selena a reassuring expression, or at least I hoped it was. Hopefully the others wouldn’t figure out that what the mirror told them was the truth. “We know about that,” I said smoothly. Searching for a lie, I told Naomi, “The Elders are going to get their seers in again. Apparently the first prediction is off. For now, just relax and wait for more information—once you’ve told me how this happened.”
A guilty look flashed across her face. “Sure, I can explain it all.”
I dismissed Tae Min to look after his patient, Damen following on his heels; Selena went with them. Once I was alone with Naomi, she told me a story so wild and unbelievable that it made my eyebrows rise—and gave me a new resolve to put more locks on the prison wing.
Apparently, in their curiosity to discover whether or not the mirror really was the Key, they’d inadvertently let a few angry pixies and a small ogre out of their cells while looking for a dimension cube.
She concluded by saying, “And we’re very sorry, and it’ll never happen again. Also, the mirror might kind of have a crack in it now. I’m not sure it still does whatever it was supposed to do.” Naomi made a face. “Sorry again.”
Sighing, I crossed my arms in disbelief. “Just go home and sharpen your knives for a while. Whatever keeps you out of my hair. I’ll take care of the ogre and the pixies.” My eyes found our guests, who were getting restless for their wine. “And Naomi?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time, just ask. I would’ve given you the dimension cube if I knew what you were up to.”
A guilty expression crossed her face. “Sure. Right, Ambassador.”
After she left, it was her last word that echoed in my head. I wouldn’t be ambassador for long, I knew; after the stunt I’d just pulled, the Elders would have me dismissed. But for now I had power, and I intended to use it however I could. First, to protect the world from certain destruction; the Godspring couldn’t unfold as it had last time, or even worse. But second, to protect Selena, who I wouldn’t let come to harm.
As I searched in my liquor cabinet for a bottle of wine big enough to get six pixies drunk, I began to brainstorm, plans falling into place in my head.
35
Selena
“And then, Naomi stepped on the floor tile that deactivates the protective field,” Elah said, a grin across his face, “and you should’ve seen the look on her face when those pixies dove at her! I’ve never heard so many curse words in my life.”
“I bet.” Leaning up against one of the lab tables in Tae Min’s office, I shot Leon a look. “And it didn’t occur to you to stop this?”
He shrugged, surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing. “They were bonding. Also, I kind of wanted to see how far it could go.”
From the lab table near the door, Tae Min commented, “You’re lucky there was a dimension cube in the south wing of the prison sector. That’s where all the minor wildlings are kept. Wait... this is wrong.” I looked over at his change in tone; he was staring down into the mirror, a strange look on his face. “I thought you said there was a crack in the mirror.”
“That’s what Naomi said,” Elah corrected. “When we tried testing it on the dimension cube, it didn’t go well. We thought that if it really was the Key it would open up—it’s modeled after the same energy that makes up the hell gates, after all. But it didn’t work, and the mirror cracked from the force.”
My heart sped up at his words. “So one of these cubes could prove whether or not something really is the Key?”
“In theory.”
Elah didn’t seem to sense my tension, but there was a frown on Leon’s face. I tried to hide my expression from him, walking over to where Tae Min was standing with the mirror. I saw the edges of a phrase on it
, plastered over his face, but before I could read the words he set the mirror down. He seemed tense.
“Is something wrong? You look a little off.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just trying to figure out how a mirror could repair itself. Even for supernatural objects, it’s a little unusual.”
“You repair yourself,” I observed, aiming for a joke—but based on the hollow expression on his face I missed terrible. “If something is going on, you’ll tell us, right?”
“Of course.”
He didn’t quite look at me when he said the words, which worried me. I glanced over my shoulder; Elah had drawn Leon into his conversation, and they were seemingly oblivious to what Tae Min and I were discussing. That was just as well.
Looking up at the doctor, I felt a strange prickling sensation. Something about him made me want to lean in close and be drawn into his orbit. It felt the way deer must feel when they’re frozen in headlights, or bugs flying straight into the killing field of a bug zapper. Entranced, I reached out and skimmed my fingers across his cheek, his skin soft and supple beneath my touch. His brown eyes were so deep and fathomless that I felt sure I could fall into them and never come out again.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Tae Min blinked, and I jerked out of the trance, dropping my hands from his cheek. He glanced at the other men. “I thought you were... with them...”
I blushed from my collarbone to my jaw. “Does everyone around here know everyone else’s business?”
His mouth quirked up in a lopsided smile. “Not everyone. But your business tends to be the topic of discussion lately. You did disappear for three months, you know.”
“Right.”
The memory of the three months I’d spent away was like a slap in the face. I drew back from him, my mind replaying every conversation I’d had with my mother in Hell; suddenly I understood why she loathed me and wanted me close to her at the same time. If I was what Petyr said, then I was a tool for Persephone, a way out of her prison.
In a way, it almost made sense. But I didn’t want to believe that it was true.
Tae Min’s eyes seemed to study my face. “You know,” he said, “it looks like you’re going through something too. If you ever want to share, I’m here for you.”
There was truth in his words that warmed me.. “Thank you. Really—I know you mean it.” I swallowed and forced a light smile onto my face. “As soon as I understand what’s going on with me, you’ll be the first to know.”
Once again, his eyes flicked over to Elah and Leon. “After them,” he said; there was no jealousy in his voice, but rather a kind of longing. I wanted to soothe it out of him, to draw him close and press my lips to his again, like we had the day that I returned to Earth. When he met my eyes I sensed the same longing in him. But before I could say anything I felt a wall go up in his expression. He stepped back and picked the mirror up, leaving a yawning gulf of space between us. “I should probably put this away. And go check on Damen.”
“Right. You have work to do.” Looking over at Elah and Leon, I added, “And I need to go home. Leon, I’m pretty sure you’re my ride, unless I wait for Maggie to pick me up. Naomi already left in her car, and mine is still dead in the parking lot.”
There was a grin on the detective’s face when he turned to me, and I got the sudden sense that I’d just interrupted a conversation where I was the topic of discussion. Based on the wicked glint in Elah’s eyes, they’d been conspiring—again.
“Actually,” Leon said, “we had another idea—another mode of transportation. How do you feel about cocktails?”
“I like them,” I said cautiously. I could almost taste the bitter and sweet mingling of one on my tongue. “You know though, I’m not technically twenty-one.”
Elah pointed out, “You’re not technically human, either.”
“We’re going to take you out.” Crossing his arms, Leon gave me a defiant look, and I found my mouth curling up at the edges in response. “You haven’t gone out since you got back, and we’ve been so busy working that we haven’t had the chance for a social night—and hunting in the dark with Naomi doesn’t count.”
“It’s time we had a little fun,” Elah said, adding, “that is, if you want to.”
“I—” My voice was briefly interrupted by the closing of the door; Tae Min was taking the mirror into another room, no doubt to hide it away from Naomi’s devious curiosity, but also to get away from our camaraderie. I felt a stab of guilt at excluding him, but whatever was going on with the doctor, he wasn’t in the mood for sharing. And I deserved a night out. “Yes. I’ll go.”
“It’s a date!” Leon declared, and I laughed, dizzy with excited nerves.
A date.
Just the three of us.
All together.
“We’re not going anywhere fancy, are we?” I asked, following behind Leon to the parking lot. “Because I’m not exactly dressed for fancy. I’m dressed for magical object fighting and ghost banishing.”
“Nowhere fancy,” Leon said, a secretive grin across his face. “In fact, kind of the opposite.”
I squinted my eyes at him as he led me in the wrong direction, twisting to look towards his squad car. “Shouldn’t we be going that way?”
“Nope.” Reaching out, he touched the handlebars of a large chrome-and-black motorcycle sitting beside him in a free space. “We’re taking this out to dinner and drinks.”
I had to bite down a comment as I thought of what it would be like to straddle a motorcycle right behind Leon, my chest to his back, legs nestled behind his. “What about Elah? How is he going to get there if we’re taking your bike?”
“You’ll see.” The look on Leon’s face was a bit too mischievous for my liking; I found myself missing the grumpy version of him, who didn’t make me worry he was up to things. “Now, put this on,” he tossed me a helmet, “and climb on back. It’s going to be a short ride, so I hope you’re hungry.”
I could tell that I wasn’t going to get anymore hints from him; whatever this was meant to be, it was a surprise. For some reason, after the day I’d had—and the discoveries I’d made—it felt like just the thing I needed.
Trying to figure out if I was somehow a magical key between realms could wait. Tonight, we dined and drank together, me and my two handsome men: the succubus, the fire-wielding knight, and the fae cop.
I wrapped my hair up on top of my head in a loose bun and strapped the helmet on. “Ready.”
“Then let’s go.”
Leon climbed on the bike first. I followed, surprised by how high up off the ground and wide it was; I’d only ever been on a motorcycle one other time, when I was a child. Somehow it seemed bigger now, without my father riding in front of me, going five miles an hour down the street while my mother watched with worry in her eyes. He’d borrowed the bike from a neighbor back when we lived in San Antonio—before things changed and we had to move.
This time was very different. Leaning in, I put my arms around Leon’s waist and caught the smell of his aftershave against his neck. Heat pooled in my belly, low and deep, and I felt a kind of contentment.
“Hold on tight,” he warned me, his voice rumbling against my arms and chest. “You holding on?”
I smiled a little at his worry. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. That’s what I like to hear.”
The engine growled to life beneath us as he twisted his hand on the ignition. Kicking off the stand, Leon aimed the handlebars out of the parking lot and accelerated out onto the open road.
My arms squeezed tight around him at the sudden speed of it all. We were going so fast, nothing between us and the open air—or the black asphalt beneath us. At first it drove a pit down into my stomach, heavy and nervous like lead.
But as I breathed in and out, looking around me while the wind roared past my ears, I felt a sort of loosening. For the first time I really felt free—like I could go anywhere, do anything, be whomever I wanted to be. The world whirred p
ast me as fast as it could, and the man I held onto was warm and strong, his chest as sure and steady as anything could be.
When we slowed to a stop a few short minutes later, I was almost disappointed. As the engine purred to a stop I asked Leon, “This is it?”
“This is it. Told you it would be a short ride.” He parked the motorcycle and reached out a hand to help me off; I took it, his fingers wide and rough beneath mine. “We didn’t want to be too far away from the Collective. There were some logistics to consider.”
I frowned at his words, puzzling at them; there was a glint in his eyes again that suggested he was up to something. Whipping my helmet off and teasing my hair down around me, I studied the building we’d parked in front of as I tried to figure out Leon’s words.
It was a rustic place, newly built but made to look old. The sign on the front cheerfully declare that it was The Barn House, which seemed an old name for a restaurant until I saw that the bones of the building were an old restored barn. A wraparound outdoor porch was half full due to the weather, the indoor area looking equally popular.
“Where’s Elah?” I asked, looking around us. “Should we wait for him?”
Another smirk curled up Leon’s lips, and I held my tongue in irritation. “He’s here,” he promised me. “I can tell you’re getting impatient, so—just follow me.”
Curious what was going on, I followed him around the wraparound porch. There was additional seating out back—an entire enclosed porch area that had a “reserved” sign hanging on the door. Leon pushed the sign aside and brought me into the empty area.
Which was when I heard the nicker. “Fira!” Spinning around, I narrowed my eyes as an image ghosted in my vision—the tiniest hint that somewhere nearby, a shadow form was being used. Understanding all at once, I walked over towards the chair in the corner, which had been conspicuously pushed back from its table. “Okay, I get it. You rode your horse here.”