by E. A. Copen
Sal must have sensed my uncertainty. “Call Shauna.”
I nodded and stepped out of the room. Relief washed over me as soon as I was back in the hall and the tension shifted. My head felt clearer with the change of venue, but I still needed coffee if I was going to make it through the night. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I shuffled back out to the waiting room and to an alcove on the far side lined with vending machines and payphones. Graffiti marked the wall next to the phones, which probably didn’t see much use in an age dominated by cell phones.
My first stop was at the coffee vending machine where I collected a cup of filmy looking, weak black coffee. To replace the dinner I’d missed, I grabbed a package of fish-shaped cheese crackers out of the machine next to it and then dropped my remaining quarters in the nearest payphone. I didn’t know every pack member’s phone number by heart, but I did know Shauna’s because it was also Daphne and Ed’s. I grimaced at the sticky feeling of the number keys on the payphone as I typed her number in.
Shauna picked up on the second ring. “Who is this?”
“Nice to hear from you too,” I answered.
“Judah? Where’s Sal? What’s happening?”
“He’s going to be fine.” That was the most important part, so I made sure I got it out first. “He’s at the hospital in Eden. Doctor Ramis and Ed are with him. He just needs a little patching up and—”
She cut me off. “Was it silver?”
“No, but I think there was magick involved. He got a good slice from Father Reed’s sword.”
I explained vaguely what had happened, doing my best to relay the information in a neutral tone. Werewolves hate talking on the phone or via the internet because they find it difficult to judge emotion and intent. At a distance, they relied heavily on voice inflection and intonation to provide clues. Basically, the phone robbed Shauna of her heightened senses and so I was afraid she’d misread my explanation and blame me.
When I was done, Shauna asked in a terse tone, “Do you need me to come down there?”
“Ed is here,” I repeated. “And they’re releasing him anytime now. There’s no reason for anybody to do anything. I just wanted to make sure everyone knew we were okay.”
There was a muffled sound, as if someone in another room had shouted something. Shauna sighed. “Daphne wants to know if Ed is okay.”
I glanced around and then leaned further into the phone. “Physically, he’s fine. But emotionally he’s pretty torn up about Mara breaking up with him.” I debated asking her if she knew Ed had been toying around with magick, but decided against it. Until I knew more, I didn’t want wild rumors to spread.
“First ones are always tough,” Shauna commented. “If it were me, I’d just go out, kill a few goats and be done with it. Ed probably just needs to drown himself in video games for a while in his nerd cave. He’ll be fine.” She hesitated. “Why did you call me and not Valentino?”
“Sal told me to call you.”
The other end was silent for a long time.
“Shauna?”
“I’m here,” she said, her voice strained. “I’ll fill in Valentino and the rest. You make sure he gets back in one piece.” She hung up without saying goodbye.
~
A short while later, I collected Sal from Doc after promising to do my best to get him to behave again. Sal insisted he walk on his own, despite Doc’s worries over his dizziness. Ed came around to stand on Sal’s right while I flanked him on the left all the way out to the parking lot. Rather than leave Sal standing there with only Ed to support him while he swayed on his feet, I paid the valet five bucks to go and retrieve my car.
While we stood, waiting under the buzzing entrance sign, Ed asked, “So, what’s your next move?”
“First, I buy a new cell phone.” I gave him a scolding look and then finished with a smile. “And look into finding someone to help you out.”
Ed drew his eyebrows together. “I mean Mara. Do you really think she’s there by choice?”
I shrugged. “She seemed better, Ed. Better than I’d seen her in a long time. I was right there. She could’ve left if she wanted.”
“Maybe she couldn’t talk freely or they’re blackmailing her to stay. She might have to stay or else they’ll hunt her down.”
“Find Reed,” Sal said. He shifted backward and I thought he was falling, but he stopped when his back hit the wall and grunted. “Find him and get some answers. He and Mara are connected somehow, and Reed was not himself. It was like he was under a compulsion.”
“Maybe Mara is too,” Ed said, hope surging in his voice. “Judah, you have to acknowledge she’d never join a cult by choice.”
“Your focus has to be on finding Reed,” Sal continued. “Without him, there are no answers and you can’t help Mara.”
I shook my head and helped Sal away from the wall so we could inch toward the parking lot. “To do a proper tracking spell, I need biological material and to get that, I need to get into Reed’s house unless he just happened to have some lying around the church. That’s not going to happen without a warrant. Given that he’s now a suspect, I should be able to secure one, but not until tomorrow morning.”
Ed turned to face me. “What about the rem? You said the compound had greenhouses, right? That’s probable cause.”
“Not until I can corroborate your testimony. No offense, Ed, but you’re not the most reliable witness. I need to do this the right way. We’re not vigilantes.”
Ed narrowed his eyes at me. Or, maybe it was against the headlights of my car as it drove up.
The valet got out and opened the passenger door and Sal sat down, wincing. He didn’t like it much, but I had to help him buckle in so that he didn’t twist in his seat. It was as I was fumbling with the buckle that I realized I had a problem. My car only had two seats and Ed still needed to get home.
I turned back to offer to call a cab for Ed but he was already storming away, head down, hands in his pockets. “Ed,” I called and took a few steps down the sidewalk after him. “Where are you going?”
“To see about that yew,” he called back and waved as he rounded the corner. He didn’t sound like he was going to go get into trouble. Maybe that’s why I worried.
“Should I stop him?” I asked Sal through the open door.
Sal shifted in his seat and closed his eyes. “If it were you behind enemy lines, do you think I’d go home and wait until tomorrow?”
“Shit.”
I rushed around to the driver’s side, got in and tore out of the emergency room lot. I brought the car around the corner of the building and slowed. It had only been a few minutes, so he couldn’t have gotten far.
About five yards down the sidewalk, I spotted something and stopped the car to get out and confirm that it was, indeed, Ed’s discarded pair of sweatpants. I squinted against the darkness, searching the hospital grounds for any sign of him and came up empty. Ed was in the wind.
Chapter Six
There was nothing I could do to find him in the dark. Sal might have been able to help if he wasn’t injured and on pain meds, but the best thing for him would be to take him home. I was too tired to drop him off and go driving around the desert in search of a werewolf. Time in the ER had eaten away the night and, by the time I made it back to the reservation, it was almost morning, closing in on the time I’d promised to relieve Bran.
I paused at the border crossing and glanced up at the razor wire-topped towers of concrete, waiting for someone to come down and raise the mechanical arm so I could drive through. It used to be, there were only two night watchmen on the walls but, ever since the drive-by nine months ago, the feds had stepped up their presence in the area. I counted two armed guards and one new camera as I waited.
After a long moment, the guard leaned out from his post and waved at me. The mechanical arm lifted and I drove through. Dark windows, dead, empty yards and deep shadows met me on the reservation. The rez had no real sense of organization with doublewides and
cottages sitting right next to each other. Half of the trailers weren’t even facing the same direction, the dirt paths and many of the roads put in as afterthoughts. Some folks had tried to brighten the place with rock gardens or painted fences, but the red, Texas dust had rolled over the town in the drought and turned everything a copper shade of brown. Gnats swirled in the sickly yellow light of the reservation’s lone streetlight.
I rolled down the window and turned up the radio as Queen asked the important questions on my radio. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Man, they were deep. Freddy Mercury was just hitting the high notes of the song when I pulled over alongside a weather-beaten white mailbox to retrieve my mail.
Technically, I lived in the house next door to Sal. Mine was one of the few houses on the reservation with an actual foundation, even if it was mostly made of chipboard and plaster. Last year, some vandals broke in and wrecked the place. The pack had pitched in to help me get it cleaned up.
I never really went back after that, partly because I’d already moved in with Sal. Considering he’d suddenly had to take on raising a daughter he only recently found out he had, it worked out. The man needed all the help he could get and Hunter needed close guidance from a male role model. I maintained a skeleton presence at my house, just in case things didn’t work out, but I only went inside once or twice a week when I needed quiet to work.
With four of us in a three-bedroom trailer, space was tight but comfortable. We almost felt like a family. A weird family sewn together from all kinds of different scraps of lives, but a family nonetheless. After sorting through the mail, I drove over and parked beside instead of behind Sal’s truck so that Bran could get his bike out and shut off my car.
Sal had dozed off, but woke as soon as the engine died. I reached over and hit the release for his seatbelt before he could fumble with it. He was tired and sore enough he didn’t protest, not even when I helped him out of the car and up the stairs.
I expected Bran would still be snoozing on the sofa when we came through the door, but he wasn’t. He stood in the kitchen, staring into the glow of the microwave while a breakfast burrito spun inside. I wouldn’t have called the green uniform on him flattering, or maybe it was just how exhausted he looked. I scrutinized him for a second and realized that the green hair was gone, too. “What happened to your green hair?”
“A little Just for Men goes a long way, Mrs. BSI,” he answered and patted the coffee pot. “Refilled it to be ready when you are, though you look like you could use some rest.”
“I just need a power nap.” I waved at him as Sal and I slid through the kitchen toward his bedroom. “This guy needs to take it easy, though. Doc’s orders.”
After dropping Sal off in the bed, I came back out to thank Bran and asked him if Mia went down okay.
“She is a good girl,” Bran said. “Slept all the way home and barely woke when I moved her into her crib.” He scratched at his chin. “Are you in the market for a toddler bed instead of that crib? I know where you can get one.”
I shook my head. “We’re afraid she’ll fall.”
“She falls a lot, Mia?”
I shrugged. “Kids are clumsy.”
“I see you are worried.”
“Of course I’m worried,” I said, sinking into the sofa. Bran sat in the chair opposite me, the breakfast burrito steaming in his hand. “She’s eighteen months now. She should be saying more words. She should be walking better. I keep worrying… maybe this is because of what happened. The ghost sickness.”
“You cured her of the ghost sickness.”
“I did,” I said, nodding. “But no one knew how much damage it really did or what the long-term effects of that cure might be on her. What if I didn’t act fast enough? What if I did this to her?”
Bran smiled and reached out to place a hand on my leg. “To be forgiven, we must first let go of our own guilt. You can’t continue to live in the past, not when the present needs you so dearly.” He stood and squeezed my shoulder. “Now, I will take my leave and let you get your rest. If the idiot in there doesn’t listen to you, tell him he will have to answer to me when I get off work.” He placed his hat on his head and headed out the door.
As soon as the door shut behind him, I leaned back and spread out over the sofa, practically melting into it. I don’t think two minutes passed before I was drifting off. My head fell forward and I jerked awake, but something wasn’t right. In fact, a lot wasn’t right.
Sal’s living room was gone, replaced by a dark cavern with deep shadows. Watery light filtered through massive green crystals. The sheer walls of the cavern stretched up a hundred feet into darkness, emeralds and diamonds glittering in them. I sat on a precipice of crystal that sloped down behind me. In front of me, a gap separated me from a mossy knoll upon which sat a throne of polished, white bone.
A man sat in the throne, a man I hadn’t expected to see for another three months. Seamus. His sword was drawn, the blade resting against the ground and his hands gripping the pommel. The mullet of silver hair on his head coiled down over his shoulder. “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.” He raised his golden eyes to behold me and I suddenly felt naked under his gaze. “Your Shakespeare wrote that. I often ponder your people’s reverence to someone of so little consequence.”
I pushed up off the crystal to stand and fought not to lose my balance. A tumble over the side would send me careening to my death and still leave Seamus’ hands clean. He’d promised not to kill me for a year and a day, but the fall would technically be my fault if it happened, absolving him of any guilt.
“You said a year and a day.” I pointed at him.
“Relax, Judah Black. I’m not here to do battle with you.”
I lowered my arm but didn’t relax. “What is this place? Am I asleep?”
“Sleep has long been the domain of the fae.” Seamus stood and brought his sword with him as he paced. A deep purple cape fluttered behind him. “It is easy enough for us to manipulate. In a sense, yes, your body is asleep, but your mind is here and I assure you that here is as real as that trailer where your body lies unprotected.” He smirked at me and it made my muscles tense.
I tried not to show how much the whole situation unnerved me by gesturing at him. “Not a Shakespeare fan?”
“Shakespeare’s works are part of the reason my operations have been increasingly more difficult since the debut of that ridiculous play featuring a character by my brother’s name. Oberon is hardly the character Shakespeare would have you humans believe. And yet he is remembered, made more powerful for that memory, and I have become all but forgotten.”
“I knew who you were.” I didn’t mention that the only reason I knew anything about Finvarra was because I’d studied Gaelic languages in college as a linguistics major. You can hardly study a language and a culture without learning some of the old myths.
“Soon, everyone will know Finvarra.” He paced back to his throne, sighed and sat down, lying the sword on the ground beside him. “But I didn’t call you here for that. You and I have a truce for some time yet. However, I am open to a… renegotiation of our earlier contract.”
“You’re all about making deals, aren’t you, Seamus?” I counted on my fingers. “First Crux, then Marcus, me, now someone else. What is it? BOGO on bad deals week at the fae necromancer emporium?”
Seamus ignored my quip and brushed something invisible from his sleeve. “You are acquainted with one Gideon Reed?”
I tilted my head to the side. What could he possibly want with Reed? “I know the name.”
“Don’t play games with me, Judah Black. You have seen him this very night.”
I took a step forward. A tiny stone tumbled forward and rolled off the edge of the crystal into blackness. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom. “What do you know about Reed? Where is he?”
Seamus regarded me with a bored look. “Your dedication to those who hate you i
s applaudable. Naive, but applaudable. Such loyalty is rare indeed.”
“What about Mara?” I pressed. “Is she involved?
Seamus drew his lips into a thin line and narrowed his eyes. “I cannot say anything definitive about her.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t,” he answered quickly. “Not without breaking my word, which I will not do.”
So, he did know something, but there was nothing I could do to get him to spill it. Even if I could have crossed the chasm between us, the only thing that might hurt Seamus would be iron. I couldn’t match him spell for spell. If I so much as tried to whisper a spell, I’d be dead before I got through the first five syllables. Maybe I could back him into a corner and trick him into telling me what he knew. “What do you have on Reed?”
Seamus made a fist and struck the arm of his throne. I flinched at the sound of bone cracking. “Nothing, unfortunately, but I have a use for something he has in his possession. If you were to bring it to me, I could be persuaded to call off my vendetta with you.”
I cracked a smile. “Do you think I’m stupid, Seamus? I’m not making any deals with you, especially with such loose language and not in writing. I know what happened to the last guy who made a deal with you.”
“Crux Continelli is currently learning the consequences of insulting me and mine.” He closed his hand around a skull at the end of the chair arm and squeezed. The bone groaned and then exploded into dust and shards no bigger than an eraser.
I fought a shiver. Whatever Seamus was doing to Crux, I didn’t want to know. “You said you want something Reed has. What is it?”
Seamus sat up straighter and adjusted the upturned collar of his shirt. “Have you heard of the sword known as Claíomh Solais?”
I thought for a moment. The phrase sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to connect the dots. “The sword of light?”