by N. M. Howell
“It won’t hurt you,” he said.
But it might kill me, she thought. It was one thing to be probed by Ernella, a distracted, incompetent bureaucratic inquisitor, but she knew Jax had a lot of power at his command. Worse, she was crushing hard on the handsome Dark Fae—she could barely admit it to herself, but she might well be falling for him. That connection would make it all the easier for him to pull deadly secrets from her brain, especially when she had no magic with which to resist.
“I promise you Rainara, no harm will come to you.” Jax positioned himself to rise.
Raina ran.
Light rain hit her as she crossed out of the circle that sheltered the picnic, her squishing boots losing a little purchase on the wet grass. She dug in, sprinting, listening hard for Jax’ approach. At the low, wrought iron fence, she leaped, vaulting it like a hurdler. To a chorus of horns and shouts, she crossed Battery Place and raced up Greenwich Street. Greenwich angled onto Trinity Place. Raina threw a glance behind her. No sign of Jax or his magic bunny.
Trinity changed names to Church Street, her sprint becoming a fast run, wind coming harder. At the T intersection of Church and Canal, a thought nearly tripped her up. Where was she going?
Lee was going to be angry at her for ducking out in the middle of the rush. Would he be angry enough to kick her out of the tiny apartment? Deep dread stole her frantic energy. She had no place to go. She was alone in the world.
She took Greene Street to Grand, heading right from Tribeca toward Little Italy and Chinatown. It was only a few blocks, and the walk felt like it took forever, and at the same time seemed way too short. The store was closed, she saw, but the hour was not late. Raina didn’t know if she could sneak in for one more night’s rest. In the alley, she unlocked the door to the back stairs of the former tenement.
Before she could begin the alpine climb, she heard distant footfalls.
“Raina?”
She was stuck by a burning paralysis. Lee.
“Could you come back here, please?”
Resigned, she followed the sound of the voice to a hallway. Doors stood open between the building’s back entrance and the store office. Lee Wing appeared, beckoning. Raina walked past the doorways to the other shops on the ground floor into Lee’s den of leaning paper towers. He pointed to a chair, face without expression.
Lee sighed as he sat across from her. “I know things are different for you. For the Light Fae. But for humans, we need to make money to pay our bills, to eat, to live.”
Raina did understand. She had taken it upon herself at a young age to pursue a career, a fully human endeavor. Her parents, her family, could not understand it, and, for the most part, discouraged her. She embraced the idea, not of money and working for a living, but of bringing all the races of the planet together. In the end, her work in Human-Fae Relations had led to her nearly being killed.
“I know. I get it. I’m really sorry, Lee.”
“When you run out in the middle of the dinner rush, do you have any idea how much money I lose?” Lee asked.
She didn’t. Not really.
“I could also be renting out the apartment where I’ve allowed you to stay.”
Raina braced herself. Here it comes. Homeless in New York City. What would she do? How could she live? She held her breath.
“I would never ask you to work for me if it wasn’t an emergency. Our families go back a long way, and I’m honored to host a daughter of the court. But I can’t host a daughter of the court if I can’t afford to pay my vendors, or my taxes, or my employees. Tomorrow, I will need you to work the afternoon shift. Perhaps even the morning shift. I want you to think of the things I’ve said before you run out again.”
Raina slowly let out her breath. Lee wasn’t evicting her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. It’s just—”
Just what? She couldn’t tell Lee the truth. If he knew, it could implicate him in things, likely fatal things beyond his control. It included his son breaking into the academy, fighting with magic. This could easily mean a death sentence for Derek, and she was sure the backlash would include Lee Wing as well. Raina couldn’t say for sure whether Lee knew that simply by harboring Raina, he was in dire danger.
She sucked it up. “No excuses. I’m sorry.”
Lee nodded. He slid on his reading glasses and pulled a stack of papers toward him. “I will take you at your word.”
“Thank you.” She rose.
He peered at her over the half-lenses, eyes serious. “One more thing.”
Raina stopped. She was certain Lee was going to say something about Derek. Somehow, he must know what his son was up to.
“Yes?”
“The elevator’s been fixed. You don’t have to take the stairs.”
Nearly collapsing with relief, Raina headed for the elevator lobby.
A rickety, groaning, claustrophobe’s nightmare, the elevator jerked Raina skyward. The car was maybe the size of two old-fashioned phone booths, the buttons for the floors looked like they had cataracts, the linoleum on the floor peeling, rust stains marred the ceiling. A half-hearted bell clanked at each floor, the lights above the door not working.
At the fourth clank, the fifth floor button on the panel came to life. With a grinding of some distant, ancient mechanism, the elevator jerked to a stop. The doors shuddered and wheezed open. Raina expected a passenger to board. No one stood in the hall. After a moment, she pushed the button to close the doors.
They remained open.
She pushed the button for the seventh floor.
Still, the doors didn’t close.
Raina pushed both buttons, again and again. The elevator car refused to move. So much for the elevator repair. At least it was only two flights to her apartment. After her run, her legs could use whatever break they could get.
When she passed the two apartments occupied by the Wings, the urge to get the truth out of Derek stopped her in her tracks. No light issued from under Derek’s door. Still, it wasn’t very late. She knocked lightly.
She felt the beats of her heart as she waited. The door went unanswered. Still, she had to get to the bottom of this, for her sake as well as Derek’s. There might be a way. Her hand fell to the knob, but the door was locked. Of course. This was New York City.
Taking several deep breaths, Raina calmed herself. If she could manage it, unlocking a door was a simple spell. If she had magic flowing through her, she wouldn’t need a spell at all—she could just telekinetically throw the bolts.
She would have to make do. With closed eyes, she imagined the other side of the door. The locks were likely identical to the ones in her apartment upstairs. Whispering, she began a mantra, the words disappearing from her mind as she spoke them, only to reappear and repeat as she fell deeper into a trance. Button lock on the knob, twist handle on the deadbolt, they became solid and clear in her inner mind. Worn, brass finish. Cool to the touch.
Unlock.
Raina’s knees buckled, and she caught herself on the doorframe before falling to the floor. Panting, more winded than when she’d run a mile from Battery Park, she lifted a palsied hand, fingers touching the doorknob.
It didn’t turn.
Shit!
She jiggled it, teeth bared. Pushed.
Raina stumbled inside as the door flung wide.
Hyperventilating, she tried to call out Derek’s name, but couldn’t come up with the breath. Staggering, she took in the “bachelor pad.”
What a mess.
The door to the single bedroom stood ajar. No one waited inside. Darkness loomed in the kitchen. Each step an effort, she walked toward the laundry basket. The shirt Derek discarded earlier still lay half on the floor. She had to lean against the wall in order to bend down and grab it.
She knew a trick, a simple child’s spell taught to her by her mother. With Derek’s shirt fisted in her hand feeling like a hundred pounds, she made for the door on rickety legs. Raina managed to turn the button lock on t
he knob. There was no way to come up with enough energy to relock the deadbolt. Quivering with exhaustion, she made her way to the back stairs. The landing to the sixth floor looked like a mountain. Beyond, the final flight, was Mount Everest.
Railing in one hand, shirt in the other, she dragged herself up each tread.
It seemed like an hour passed before she dragged her toe up past the final riser and moved from the landing toward her door. Her set of keys, which consisted of two, felt weighty as she pulled them from the zip pouch on her hoodie. Once inside, she found she had no strength to pull down the Murphy bed. Instead, she collapsed on the worn carpet, her back against the wall. Breathing felt like a chore.
Had she ever been this tired? Fairly certain she would fall asleep sitting on the floor, she shook herself, and gripped Derek’s shirt a little tighter. She hoped she wasn’t too exhausted to go through with her plan.
It was a trick she learned when she was a girl. Raina’s mother had taught it to her. In those days, she was so often away on business of the court that Raina developed a strong surge of separation anxiety whenever she left.
This magic was not so much exerting power as drawing it in. There were humans that could do it to a certain extent. They called it psychometry. When holding a personal item, it was possible to tune in on that person, to see where they were at that moment, even though they were separated by miles—or even death. In her mother’s case, oftimes by continents. With this gentlest of magics, her mother cured Raina of her anxiety.
She had Derek’s shirt. He had worn it recently. It still had the faint scent of his cologne, aftershave, soap. Raina closed her eyes, and let her fingers delve into the soft fibers, sensing the texture, the weave. The aroma that was solely Derek drifted to her. Solely Derek.
Derek.
Derek…
…stood in a room of sweating stone, with no windows, only the flickering of a few distant candles. Raina gazed through Derek’s eyes, making out the silhouette of a woman. She stood with her right hip cocked, arms folded, head angled. Long black hair draped to her waist. Trini.
“We did try!” Derek said.
Trini leaned closer. “Try harder.”
“Why the hell do I need to try harder?” Derek held out his palms. “You’re there every day. It seems like the rest of us are going through a ton of effort to get onto a campus where you work every day.”
She tossed her hair. “I’m doing everything I can. You know that.”
“All I know for sure is that Jaime and Lukas are the ones who got caught. If they turn on us, we’re—”
“They won’t,” Trini cut him off. “I’m taking care of it—” The half-fae suddenly frowned in puzzlement.
“What?” Derek whispered.
Trini stepped closer, studying Derek closely. He tried to step back, but she caught his face in her hands. They were close enough to kiss. Her eyes bulged wide.
“Gods beyond, Derek, someone else is peering through your eyes!”
With a yelp, Raina tossed the shirt in the corner. Quivering, she hugged her knees, dropping her head. Had Trini gotten a look back at Raina through Derek’s eyes? If she did, Raina was too fatigued to even move. For nearly an hour, she stayed in the same position. No one came, no one knocked on her door. It was all she could do to crawl the three paces across the room, lower the bed from the wall, and fall on it.
14
Shadows of the Light Fae stood at the portal, beckoning to her. Just a dream, Raina thought. Although the last dream like this ended with her plunged into the Lake at Central Park. Except this dream wasn’t set at the lake. Raina stood in her tiny apartment bathroom, staring into the cloudy mirror. Tinny voices called her name.
She put her hand on the glass. “Tell me what to do! How can I help you?”
Where her hand should be reflected, another hand appeared, pressed to the wrong side of the mirror. It bore many rings, the knuckles gnarled slightly with age. A visage appeared, arm following hand, shoulder appearing, and soon a figure stood staring back in place of Raina’s reflection. The face looked a lot like her own, only older, thinner, with the slightest traces of crow’s feet and laugh lines.
“Mother?” Raina breathed.
Mariea Rayelle beamed at her, though her eyes filled with tears. “My baby.”
“Gods beyond, Mom, I miss you so bad!” she wailed. The corners of her mouth drew down, wetness prickling and rolling from her eyes to blur the beautiful, regal woman at arm’s length. Raina swiped away the tears and put her other hand on the glass.
“My baby. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”
Raina squinted back. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is.” Her mother took a long breath. “We’ve been dishonest with you, Raina.”
“What do you mean? About what?”
Mariea gestured vaguely with her other hand. “All of this. We need your help, Raina. I know it’s difficult. But you are the only one who can save us. You have been all along.”
“How? How can I save you?” Raina pressed harder against the mirror.
And took a few stumbling steps across uneven ground. She caught herself before caroming into a tree. Not again! At least she hadn’t fallen into the lake. But, damn it…
Raina cast her eyes around. She stood in a dark wood, trees tumbled around her, scarred bedrock lurching from the dry brownish sod. The sky above showed no moon nor stars. However, she recognized the orange reflection of street lights on low-hanging clouds. She was still in the city. Carefully, she climbed the shallow angle of the fallen tree to the top of a boulder. The lake lay a few yards to the south, the skyscrapers of Midtown beyond. Raina was in Upper Central Park, the wild area called The Ramble.
A long, deep growl nearly startled her from her perch. Deep, snuffing breaths sounded beneath her. Rocks tumbled and the bole she stood upon shook. Something massive snapped through the branches, breath like a bellows, the odor of sulfur and snake mingled in the night air. After her last nightmare transport to the lake, she’d sensed something in the water with her. Now, something large stalked the woodsy park.
Atop the log angled on the boulder fall, she stood about eight feet above the ground. Glowing eyes bobbed toward her at that same height. Slowly, she got down in a crouch, flattening herself against the mossy trunk. Luminous orange eyes tracked left and right as they moved ever closer.
It clambered down the incline, wings folded down, the way a bat walks. Two legs, serpent scales, long neck, the hind legs ending in huge claws that gripped soil and rock as it descended. Raina had never seen the beasts of the distant past. Two legs made it a wyvern, but the horns on its nose and above its eyes made it a dragon. No, it was far too small to be a dragon, although it was at least twenty feet long.
The creature inhaled mightily through its nose, the wind of it stirring the surrounding leaves. Raina realized it was hunting—hunting for her. Was it the same thing she’d seen in the lake? As it neared she saw algae clinging to its dull orange scales. A name came to her, from something she’d only seen in childhood picture books. A nithedrake, the most evil and dangerous of all the dragon family.
Nithedrake were creatures of the Dark Fae, used to hunt and kill unwary Light Fae, or as mounts to fly above protective wards and dive into battle. Something about their presence dulled Light Fae magic, perhaps an adaptation to allow the sinister monsters access to their favorite snack.
After the great truce, the Dark Fae agreed to divest themselves of the lethal creatures. Raina had never seen nor heard of one in her life. The Light Fae believed them all but extinct. But to encounter one here, in the middle of New York City?
With a roar, the massive, smoking head twisted toward her, fanged maw wide. The head darted toward her, large enough to bite her in half. Instinctively, she held her hand in front of her. A futile gesture at best. To her shock, a scythe of light flew from her, growing, slicing and splashing with sparking energy into the beast’s face.
What the hell was that? She didn’t
have time to consider. Raina leaped off the angled log, down the tumble of boulders. Behind her, the fallen tree exploded in splinters, the rocks cracking and thundering from the nithedrake’s passage. A sound like huge drums shook the park. The nithedrake was taking flight. Raina ran along the twisting path of The Ramble. Fire rained around her, behind her, setting the branches alight. She didn’t have enough of a head start. The monster would fry her to death. With the sound of a raging storm, the creature inhaled mightily above her. An idea occurred. She knew approximately where she was in the park. Making a hard right, she headed toward the lake. Between her and the water, nestled in trees between two abrupt rises, was an archway beneath a narrow path.
Despite the dark, Raina sprinted along the path, diving for the stone shelter as the nithedrake let loose. Both sides of the path beneath the arch billowed with white-hot flames, but Raina remained sheltered from the worst of the heat. Wings beat heavily, the creature flying past. She knew it would only circle back. It was too big to pass through the arch, but it could easily hop over it once it discovered its prey.
She remembered a nursery rhyme her mother taught her. A hide-and-seek song that could make her invisible, to give her a leg up on older children but not reveal herself with the power of a Phaze. Maybe. If she could even remember it. Raina cast her memory back.
Nithedrake, o Nithedrake
Not a sense will I awake
Nary a single twig I’ll break
A frightened breath I will not take
Neither a leafy branch I’ll shake
Nithedrake, o Nithedrake
Wyvern, o Wyvern
My shadow you cannot discern
For my blood you do not yearn
I am none of your concern
Away! Away from me you turn
Wyvern, o Wyvern
Drum-beat wings lost tempo. The nithedrake settled to the ground with an earthquake. Long, scaly body stiffened, tail waving hypnotically, taloned feet scraping furrows in the concrete, the horror locked glowing orange eyes with hers.