No matter how beautiful Cyan was, Andre had thought his allure toward the faerie could be nothing more than standard-variety lust, and yet he found himself unable to resist the impulse to run his hands down Cyan’s thighs as the mystic being crawled over him and tried to gently wrestle him out of his clothes.
Even as Cyan’s touch distracted him, his shirt half-open and the faerie tracing his fingertips down Andre’s bare breast to his ribs, Andre’s mind wandered to thoughts of the faerie ring, of the magic Miss Dell had told him of. Of Cyan’s claws and teeth tearing into a human sacrifice. That probably wasn’t how the process to power the artifacts worked, necessarily, but the imagery had manifested in Andre’s head all the same.
But as Cyan leaned close, sniffing and kissing along Andre’s neck and jawline, Andre’s frightening thoughts gave way to a deep warmth and gratitude toward the faerie.
Cyan did not have the prejudices of Andre’s fellow humans. He did not despise or fetishize Andre for his practice with magic or even for his disabilities. Although Cyan had his own magic of a sort, he was unburdened by the realities and politics of Andre’s world and too alien in his communications to be complicated. Cyan did not understand Andre’s place in Ashland society, how hard he had worked to survive and recover, and how his culture had branded him a deviant for daring to use magic when no other resources had ever been available to him. And that lack of understanding was liberating, as Cyan didn’t need to understand.
There was something pure in that, and Andre longed for it as much as he did for the heat of Cyan’s touch.
Andre dared to half-sit up and slide what remained of his shirt off his shoulders while Cyan continued to nip at the skin just below his jaw. When he tried to remove his glasses, Cyan plucked them from his grasp, peering curiously into his own reflection in their lenses.
“You should put them on the dresser.” Andre pointed, knowing that his words would not be enough, but Cyan understood his intent easily, standing to approach the dresser and set the glasses gently upon its surface. Given their limited ability to communicate with each other, that certainly eased any worry Andre might have had about any potential misunderstandings in their current interaction.
Cyan returned to the bed as a blur of vibrant blue in Andre’s now-limited sight, a shapeless and incorporeal phantom of turquoise until he was close enough again for Andre to read the details of his feathers and the lines of his lean muscles. Cyan began climbing back up on the bed, but he paused before touching Andre’s cheek again, watching him with watery black eyes. Andre reached out to take ahold of Cyan’s other hand, and he accepted the invitation gleefully, encircling Andre into a tight embrace before pulling them both to fall flat upon the bed.
Any lingering fear ebbed as Cyan’s gentle strokes brushed questions from Andre’s mind, until he was so consumed with want that not a thought remained.
Chapter 13
“Sure about this?”
Daisy watched dry evergreens whirring by through the passenger seat window of the Pasternacks’ car – the same vehicle she had dented up on her frantic drive from the Gin Fountain to her apartment. It was a relief that it still ran, as she had never really bothered to ask what had become of the car after her night of abusing it.
She ignored Vicks’ question, instead glancing over at him and examining the heavy faux-gold bangles clanking from his wrists and bumping against the steering wheel. He had a matching choker necklace, too, but otherwise wore his plain, ratty bachelor’s clothes. The wig was absent, but he had thick, smudged black liner around his eyes. “Are you a woman today, or a man?” Daisy only asked to change the subject, as she wasn’t sure about their outing at all, but damned if she would admit it.
Vicks shrugged. “Meh. Can’t decide.”
“Do you want me to use ‘she’ or ‘he,’ though?”
“Meh.” Vicks glanced at Vinnie in the backseat. “How’s it goin’, big fella? Car sick?” The rural roads heading out toward the coast were indeed winding, but Vinnie hadn’t complained once, nor did he look particularly green when Daisy examined him in the rearview mirror. He just looked stern, as usual, but Vicks could apparently see something there that Daisy couldn’t.
“I worry about what happened to the last laskvets, the one my grandmother knew.” Vinnie tried to meet Daisy’s gaze through the mirror. “Likely the folks who killed him live at this lumber mill my grandmother mentioned, or somewhere else nearby. If they find you trying to commune with a faerie, they will give you much the same.”
“They’ll try.” She wished she felt the confidence she laced into those words.
They drove in silence after that until they reached Hillfarm Road. “Now, how are we gonna find this faerie ring?” Vicks asked as he turned down the road.
“Faeries use magic to move between realms, yes?” Vinnie asked Daisy, but she could only shrug. She assumed so, but it was hard to tell what was “magic” to faeries, considering some of their innate abilities. She glanced back at him, only to find him staring out the window. There was an iridescent gleam in his eyes, shifting and multicolored like an oil spill. “If so, I can seek out the aura of the spot. I will tell you when we are near.”
“Vicks, you have mana in here, right?” Daisy asked, realizing that Vinnie would be taking a great risk to his health activating his magic without any.
“Always.”
Hillfarm Road was longer than Daisy expected, winding up onto a steep hill covered in evergreens and sagebrush. They drove for probably another half mile before Vinnie said, “Here – the left side of the road.”
Vicks pulled over onto an empty dirt patch in the area that Vinnie had indicated. They all stepped out of the car and rounded back to the trunk, and Vicks opened it up to reveal a shotgun, a rifle, and a sheathed machete.
“I would have expected more,” Vinnie said, grabbing the rifle. “Don’t you use this car to make deliveries?”
“Yeah, but since all the trouble started, Frisk and I been keeping more of our weapons at home.” Vicks picked up the machete and handed it to Daisy. “Here you go, Daze. In case any rubes jump us.” Daisy took the blade, even though she was certain that her magic would protect her better.
“All right, Vinnie. Where to, now?” He pointed them uphill, and Daisy led the way, hacking through the sagebrush with the machete. The other two followed behind her, firearms at the ready.
With Vinnie directing her, they soon came across a clearing out of sight from the road. There were a few stumps and uprooted saplings, a conspicuous mound of dirt, and a faerie ring made up of deep violet and pale magenta fungi. The little mushrooms were brighter and taller than those of Cyan’s ring, but it otherwise looked the same, even about the same circumference.
Vinnie swung his head around, examining the edges of the clearing with his eyes still shining full of magic that swirled iridescently. “I will be able to see if anyone approaches, but mundane human auras are not as bright as magic ones. I may not find them until they are upon us.”
“I should test the ring, shouldn’t I? To make sure it works before I try bringing Cyan here.”
Vinnie nodded. “Be quick.”
Daisy set down the machete and approached the ring. “I didn’t bring anything to offer, though.”
“How’s that, now?” Vicks asked, coming up beside her. She caught a glint of gold off his bangles in the dim woodland daylight.
“A faerie will only appear if lured here by magic and an offering. Cyan could be summoned with shiny objects and sweet foods. I hope that the faerie at this ring will respond the same way, but I don’t have anything with me.” She glanced meaningfully down at Vicks’ bangles. He caught the look and sighed.
“All right, all right.” He slipped them off one at a time, handing them both over. “You owe me, though.”
“I will replace them, I promise.”
Vicks shook his head. “Nah, don’t bother. They’re trashy, anyway. Just make it up to me with a dinner date. Nothin’ fresh, though –
I only do platonic relations.” Daisy smiled at him in thanks and stepped into the ring, laying down the bangles.
She settled into the bare earth, crossing her legs as she adjusted the onyx ring so the stone faced upward from her palm. She only owned two pairs of breeches, and she had been lucky enough to have donned one of them that morning, perhaps unconsciously in her efforts to spite Mr Swarz and his damned expectations. Not that she looked anything short of a stylish if gently masculine Modern Girl in those high-waisted pants.
Comfortable on the ground and with the ring adjusted, she activated it to send a small, wisping flame shooting up from the stone. She allowed the magic flame – more liquid in its appearance than that of regular fire – to dance over her palm for a few minutes, until lines of blinding white cracked across the surface of reality in front of her.
“Daze, what is–?”
Daisy didn’t bother to turn to Vicks. “Shh! Never mind it, and just stay outside of the ring. I’ll let you know if I need help. Keep an eye out for anyone else until then.”
The crack expanded, exposing a glimpse into that rainbow-colored otherworld beyond, and a clawed hand stretched from the bright abyss into the human realm. As the rift grew into a portal large enough for a human to pass through, the rest of the faerie’s body followed.
Cyan was the only faerie Daisy had ever seen, and she wasn’t sure what she expected from another of his species. The one that appeared before her looked like an uncanny imitation of a human crossed with an insect or bird, just as Cyan did, and she stood tall with breasts that seemed too heavy for her frame. Her face was nearly identical to Cyan’s, with the same black eyes and flat nose, but her skin and feathers came in shades of pastel purple.
Lavender.
When the faerie stood fully in the human dimension, she glanced down at the gold bangles before shifting her gaze to Daisy, and she snarled.
Daisy’s heart constricted. She knew how to deal with Cyan from those visits with her grandmother. It had never occurred to her that another faerie might not be as keen on strangers. To her shock, Lavender ignored the offering entirely, instead gazing around the clearing. She looked directly at Vinnie and Vicks, and although she didn’t react to either of their presences, that acknowledgement was more than Cyan had done when Mr Swarz stood outside the encirclement of his faerie ring. Her snarl faded when her eyes landed on the dirt mound on the far side of the clearing.
She made a noise like a hungry kitten and stepped toward it, passing by Daisy without another thought. Daisy turned to watch, and when she expected Lavender would halt at the edge of the ring, the faerie stepped over it and strode to the mound. The portal to the faerie realm shimmered and disappeared once she was outside the ring.
“What do we do?” Vicks asked in a whisper.
Daisy stood, watching Lavender kneel over the mound, picking absently at clods of dirt there. “I don’t know. I thought she would take the offering, but…” She trailed off, at a complete loss as to what this faerie was doing.
But Vinnie shook his head. “The laskvets – he was buried there.” Lavender dug her fingers into the soil and moaned, hunched over in misery. “Perhaps she thought he would be the one calling for her. She seems to be… mourning.”
“Why?” Daisy could hardly imagine Cyan reacting that way if something should happen to her.
“To call laskvets ‘faerie lovers’ is not to say that there are merely enthusiastic about the creatures. And, if my grandmamma’s story is to be believed, these faeries visit the human realm at great cost to themselves. It may be more than shiny objects that compel them to come here.”
“She loved this man?” Daisy asked. Vinnie only shrugged, and Daisy joined him and Vicks outside of the ring to watch Lavender whimper and paw at the dirt.
“What now?” Vicks asked.
“I came here to see if sending Cyan back through her portal would work,” Daisy said. “If I could just communicate what I need, I might be able to ask her to help me.”
Vicks’ brow wrinkled. “You gonna fuck her?”
She returned the question with a flat stare. “I don’t think all faerie lovers have to take the name so literally. But she won’t understand me if I try to talk to her, and I’m not sure how else…” She paused, remembering something from Cyan’s visit to her apartment. Tufts of feathers had fallen off of his injured elbow fringe, and she had stuffed some in her pocket. She reached in and pulled out a delicate green-blue feather. It might be enough. With luck, Lavender and Cyan might even know each other on the other side of those portals, and she would recognize it as his.
Creeping around the makeshift grave to approach Lavender from the front, Daisy held the feather out as she tiptoed up to the faerie. “Hello, lovely creature.” Lavender looked up at her with loss and hunger painted on her alien features. Daisy didn’t know if faeries could shed tears, but the corners of her mouth twisted into the mask of someone consumed with weeping. “Lovely creature, your brother needs your help. This is his – do you know it?”
Lavender stared blankly at her until she pushed the feather closer, and recognition ebbed away the misery from the faerie’s expression. She crawled forward on hands and knees to sniff at the feather before carefully taking it from Daisy’s hands, turning it around to examine its bright color.
“He needs help,” Daisy repeated. “He needs to go back home.” She pointed toward the faerie ring and the space where the portal had earlier appeared. “Home.”
Lavender’s jaw twitched as she sniffed, ruffling her own feathers, and her dark eyes followed Daisy’s gesture. She stood and wandered over to the ring, her back unusually straight as she took delicate steps. Returning to the center, she turned to Daisy and tilted her head.
Daisy nodded, putting so much emphasis into the gesture that it hurt her neck, hoping that this faerie understood. “Yes! The portal. Can you take him through the portal? Take him home?” She came closer, pointing at the feather still gripped in Lavender’s hand and then at the empty space where the portal had opened.
Lavender’s gaze wandered – first to the feather, to the spot where Daisy had pointed, to Daisy herself, and finally to the grave of her fallen lover. When her eyes returned to Daisy, she nodded once, slowly. There was clarity in her black eyes, and underneath that an unshakable unhappiness. Daisy pitied her for her loss, but she heaved a sigh of relief all the same.
“Thank you.” Lavender’s hand closed over the feather, crushing it. “I will return with him, soon.” Her words would be meaningless, but Lavender must have heard the dismissal in them, as she knelt to gather up the bangles and the portal to the faerie realm opened again. Daisy stood still, watching her leave without a glance back. When Lavender was gone and the portal closed, Daisy and her companions were left silent in the woods, with only the distant chirping of a finch in the background.
“That it?” Vicks asked once Daisy picked up the machete and began toward the trail they had cut through to the clearing.
“That’s it.” She didn’t say anything more until they returned to the car.
When they were back on the road, returning to Soot City, she was able to shake the haunting sorrow she had seen in Lavender and was able to speak again. “I think she understood. She’ll help Cyan back home.”
“And then what?” Vicks asked. Of course, she had only told him the same that she had said to Vinnie – that she had a faerie in her possession and needed to be rid of him.
“What do you mean? Getting Cyan back home is the whole point. There’s no ‘and then’ to follow it.”
Vicks’ eyes flickered away from the road just long enough to glare sideways at her. It was the first time she had ever seen an emotion other than flippant joviality or hungry curiosity on his face. “Don’t bullshit me. This has to do with the Gin Fountain and your little do-dads. Nobody was sending hits after any of us before you showed up, and Swarz never needed to babysit no faeries before then, neither. I’m not stupid, Daze.”
He was right,
but the accusations in his words put her on the defensive. “Look, I don’t understand everything that’s going on, but my first priority now is to deal with Cyan, so that’s what I’m going to focus on.”
Vicks’ hands tightened on the steering wheel, highlighting all the cracks and scars on the skin of his knuckles. “My sister got shot. She could’ve died.” Daisy was about to snap back at him, refusing to take responsibility for that, until he added, “You could’ve died. Daze, if there are people hunting us, you gotta think of the bigger picture. This faerie, he landed in your lap because of these mage-hunters, didn’t he?”
“They followed Mr Swarz to Cyan’s faerie ring and destroyed it, yes,” she admitted.
“And don’t you think they might try to follow you to this one, too?” Daisy’s heart sunk. She had been careful in seeking out Vinnie’s – and now Vicks’ – help, but there was still a chance that someone had followed Cyan to her apartment and was waiting to track him further. She already blamed herself for what happened to Cyan, for showing Mr Swarz the faerie ring at all, and she couldn’t bear to be responsible for the destruction of another ring. Especially not after seeing how much Lavender already suffered from the humans’ distrust of magic.
But acknowledging the risk didn’t do much to change her options. “I can’t keep Cyan in my apartment forever!” She jumped when she felt Vinnie’s heavy, warm hand rest on her shoulder.
“Mr Swarz is a clever man, and I trust he knows more about your situation than either of us. Perhaps you should consult with him before you act.”
Daisy nodded, relaxing under Vinnie’s reassuring touch. She might have been at her wits’ end with Mr Swarz and his nonsense, but she still trusted him to be an intelligent man, and he did know as much about the situation as she did. She closed her eyes and kept them shut for most of the ride back into town, trying not to dwell on the misery she had seen in Lavender or her own fear that she might end up inflicting more.
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