Out of the Blue

by Lyra Evans

  They shared a look, and Niko made his way immediately down the hall toward the kitchens. The hallway was relatively uninteresting but for the dazzling lighting along the edges of the walls. The fixtures hung down like perfectly sculpted icicles and emit such a soft white light they seemed made of magic. But the careful pacing of them along the wall and length of the hall told Niko they were definitely electric. He stopped at the end of the hall, having come to a massive ballroom at the back of the house. But the kitchens were nowhere in sight.

  Cobalt gave him a strange look, equally confused, then Niko remembered this was an old home, an old manor, and from a time long ago when servants were best neither seen nor heard. Rolling his eyes, he walked back the length of the hallway, paying closer attention to the walls. Then, just between two of the icicle lights, he sensed the shift with his hand. The slightest ripple in the magical runes marking the perimeter of every area. When he looked closer to the wall, he saw a fine seam along the grain of the panels that indicated a break. With the press of his hand to the edges, the hidden door clicked softly and hissed sideways as it slipped out of the way.

  “Do the very wealthy of Maeve’s Court take offense at the idea that food does not exist prior to their consuming it?” Cobalt asked, following Niko down the narrower pathway ahead of them. The corridor to the kitchens was considerably less lavish than the main areas. The walls were painted in simple neutrals, the floor tiled in equally forgettable colours. There was little to no sound as they passed into the main kitchen.

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Niko said. “I’m about as far from the ‘very wealthy’ as you can get. Ash and Fir, I was too poor to get a job working as a serving boy here.”

  Cobalt made a noise Niko couldn’t quite identify, but the look on his face suggested it was disgust. Trying not to get ruffled at the reaction to his poverty, Niko pressed forward into the kitchen itself.

  “Any in high society that considers anyone ‘too poor’ for a job has no business considering themselves ‘high society.’ The sheer disdain in this place is offensive.” Cobalt seemed genuinely angry, more so than he’d been since Niko had met him. Calmed by the realization that Cobalt’s disgust was directed at the rich, not at Niko’s past, he shrugged in response.

  “Most Fae are past that bullshit now. People don’t buy into the old families and the ‘Roots of the Trees’ nonsense, but there are still some. Evidently.”

  The kitchens were massive and sprawling, equipped with top of the line appliances on every level. Everything save for one appliance, anyway. Niko studied the counters and cupboards, but try as he might, he couldn’t find anything resembling a dishwasher. There were, however, several deep, industrial-sized sinks. Because the dishes were far too delicate for the dishwasher, weren’t they?

  Niko felt around with his enhanced hand, but there was a mess of magical interference in the kitchens. It seemed as though, maybe there was a spike of violent magic, beneath the layers of runes and magical implements at work here, but it could have been anything. And given the sheer force of the power needed to cause the injuries to Indigo, Niko thought it was likely nothing would be able to effectively mask the residual magic.

  Along one wall, next to a long wooden dining table, was a set of small lights arranged in rows with tags beneath them. The tags read with locations like dining hall, solarium, master bedroom, east sitting room, west sitting room, and so forth. To the left of this was a small door, unremarkable in its design, marked ‘servants’ quarters.’

  Niko pressed his enhanced hand to the surface of the door to push in, but the moment his skin made contact with the wood, he felt a searing pain. Yanking his hand back, rattled, he reached forward again more carefully. The shock of pain came back, sending a surge of something down his spine. Willing himself to concentrate, he held his position, eyes closed, and tried to feel the pain more accurately.

  “What is it?” Cobalt asked.

  Niko screwed his eyes shut, jaw tight, fighting against the instinct to pull away. “It’s like fire, I think. Or… no. Not fire. It’s hot metal. Like a branding iron.” Forcing his way through the pain, he pushed the door open. Once it swung clear of the threshold, Niko yanked his hand back again, soothing it with his other. The pain dissipated quickly when he was no longer in contact with the spike of magical residue, but the intensity of what he felt was significant.

  “Is it—what you’ve been looking for?” Cobalt asked, studying the doorway carefully. There was nothing visible to the naked eye. No sign of blood or scorching, no evidence to speak of.

  “I don’t think so,” Niko said. “It felt strong, but not strong enough. Still, something happened here. Some kind of violent magic. Hard to tell when, mind you.”

  Cobalt cocked an eyebrow. “How long does residual magic last?”

  Niko shrugged, staring down the descending stairwell beyond the door. It was dark in there, and there was nothing at all to decorate the solid stone walls.

  “It depends on the level of magic and the particular event,” he said. “There are no hard and fast rules about this. Normally magical residue will dissipate over time, getting weaker and weaker over days and weeks, then disappearing completely beneath other magic. It lasts longer if something significant or violent has occurred. But if the same kind of event takes place repeatedly, then the magic can leave a much more lasting impression.” Niko considered the door, the servants’ quarters, the kitchens, and everything about the manor house. “I’d say chances are this bit of magic is the result of what went on in this house for years. The way they treated the servants seems...” Niko searched for a word, then realized there was no reason to pull punches. “Fucked up.”

  Cobalt frowned, looking about himself again, as though seeing the kitchens in a new light. “Any way to tell what exactly happened?”

  Niko shook his head. “Not from the magical residue alone. But given the particular feeling, my impression is that it was pretty fucking bad.” Cobalt’s jaw tightened, the muscle bulging. “Come on, let’s see what other surprises lay down here.” He stepped into the stairwell and began to make his way down, Cobalt on his heels. The stairwell was curved in a loose spiral and descended what seemed like two storeys. He knew this because there was a landing at one point with a door marked ‘playroom.’ He supposed that might be in reference to a children’s play area. Servants were also, often, surrogate parents to the wealthiest old families in Maeve’s Court. They would wake and tend to the children in the wee hours, allowing the heads of household to sleep through the night. Among other things.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a long, dark hallway bracketed with electric lanterns along the walls. The lanterns were unlit until Niko found a switch on the wall and flipped it. They burst into life, putting the reality of the servants’ quarters on display.

  The hallway was mostly concrete and stone, like the stairwell had been, and the floor was cold and uneven. Wooden doorways dotted their way along the corridor, some open, some closed. At the far end of the corridor was the only door different from the others. It was wider than the others and bore no handle at all. Niko cast Cobalt a look, a feeling of unease spreading over him.

  “This is… picturesque,” Cobalt said flatly. Niko’s mouth quirked slightly, and he started down the hallway, peering into the closest room.

  The room was small and square with little accoutrement. A cot sat in one corner, neatly made with simple white sheets and a flat pillow. There was a small table and chair against the other wall and a tiny night table next to the bed. A rod propped at the corner of the room served as a sort of closet, Niko guessed. There was little else in the room. Perhaps this one was unused. Niko swiped with his hand but felt nothing in particular.

  He moved on to the next room but found the décor eerily similar. Again, no evidence in the room, magical or otherwise. And on and on he went. None of the rooms seemed to yield anything significant. Every once in a while, he got the slightest impression of peace, longing, and a whisper
of home, but nothing he was seeing supported those feelings. So he continued checking. Once he’d made it nearly halfway down the hallway, he stopped and stared around himself.

  “This doesn’t seem right,” he said. Cobalt nodded.

  “These rooms are devoid of any life. As though they aren’t used at all,” he said. “But given what you felt upstairs, surely that’s not possible.”

  Niko agreed. “Maybe this place hasn’t been lived in for a while?” Niko mused. It was possible, he supposed, that what he’d felt upstairs had been imprinted on the space over years of abuse, and therefore still lingered, while whatever happened down here had faded long ago. But if the house wasn’t being used, why sell it now? And why was Indigo here? Why was he so certain this was connected?

  Pushing open the door of the next room to check, Niko actually stepped inside this one. He stood next to the small cot, studying his surroundings. The floor was the same concrete as the hall, the walls a slab of unremarkable design. The furnishings were simple wood, worn in places from use. As he studied the bed, however, he saw splinters of the wood in places where they didn’t quite make sense.

  Crouching down next to the headboard, he studied the point where the board met the frame, right up against the wall. There was splintering, wearing, around the post, as though something had been fastened to it and repeatedly pulled or tugged. Niko pulled the bed away from the wall and checked the other side. The same thing was there, only there was also a mark on the wall at the same height. A gouge in the cement, as though something metal had dug into it. The first thought to strike Niko was—

  “Are those marks from—handcuffs?” Cobalt asked, clearly uncertain himself.

  Niko touched the edges of the markings with his enhanced hand. It pinched, like metal pulling short hairs and wearing on skin, and Niko nodded slowly.

  “It seems so,” he said. Studying the details of the mark, he concluded, “Seems recent, too. The marked part is lighter than the rest. And the residual magic feels new. Someone was down here. Within the last week. And they were handcuffed to the bed. Reinforced by magic.” He shook his head, standing up. “Indigo?”

  Cobalt looked around the room, but finding nothing, he stepped out and went to the next. Niko followed him, and Cobalt pulled another bed out. The same markings were on this one. And the neighbouring one too.

  “If Indigo was here, he wasn’t the only one bound,” Cobalt said. They checked all the rooms more thoroughly, moving as quickly as possible, but they found only about half of the rooms bore signs of restraint. Some had no marks at all.

  “So some, but not all, of the people kept down here were bound to the beds,” Niko said, trying to think it out. “But why? Why only some? And it doesn’t seem like they were servants.” Niko thought of the Woods and what Starla had said. “Trafficked people.” He frowned, his stomach churning painfully. “The newest victims were probably the ones bound. To keep them from escaping.”

  Cobalt’s eyebrows knitted together. “Why not bind them all? Wouldn’t you take any opportunity to escape, if you were trafficked?”

  Niko’s head fell slightly, his gaze dark. He swallowed against something thick in his throat. That taste was back. The one he longed to be free of. Salt and bitterness. “Not after enough time. They stay because they know they won’t be free. And some of them eventually gain some kind of standing with their traffickers. A modicum of power over the other victims, and they cling to it. At least from what I’ve seen.”

  Cobalt fell silent, and Niko could feel the Selkie’s eyes on him. After a moment in which Niko felt himself drawn out, Cobalt got back to his feet.

  “This is all conjecture,” he said. “We have no proof these bonds were to keep trafficked people, other than the tenuous link to Indigo. As of now, we still can’t even prove he was here.”

  Niko nodded. “We keep looking,” he said, walking out into the hall and straight for the door on the end. He paused a moment, relatively sure of what he would find on the other side. On a hunch, considering what they’d found so far, Niko brushed his fingers over his nose, making another trade. He weakened his sense of taste for a moment to enhance his sense of smell. Immediately he was assaulted with the scents all around him. The cold, dusty, damp smell of the concrete and stone, the dry smell of the wood furniture, the close air, a muddied mishmash of smells from beyond the door, and one other scent, overpowering all the rest.

  Ocean air and a crisp waterfall, a breeze over the water and the sharp inhale of breath before a particularly high dive. It was the breathless laugh of a runner through the whipping wind, pushing at full tilt toward nothing in particular, the smell of sunlight on hot sand and freshly fallen palm fronds and a forest in a rainstorm. Niko was dizzy with it, his entire body shuddering in response. And again, his mind was filled with raw images of Cobalt pressing him to the wall, pushing inside him and pinning him there, one hand holding Niko’s wrists above his head, the other wrapping around his throat.

  “Are you all right?” Cobalt asked, suddenly too close, too hot, too dizzying. Niko gasped and flinched, pulling away sharply. Cobalt stepped back a moment, at first concerned, but when he saw Niko’s parted lips, his blown pupils, and his heaving chest, the concern turned to a smirk. “Anything I can help with?”

  Niko fought to regain control of himself, ignoring the blood rushing southward in his body. He shut his eyes and clenched his jaw. In one swift motion, he pushed through the door, pretending Cobalt had said nothing, and found himself overwhelmed with a different set of scents. How did Werewolves deal with this all the time?

  The room behind the door was a bathroom, clearly meant for use by all the servants. There were several narrow toilet stalls down one wall, two sunken baths separated by a tiled half wall in a corner, three shower stalls next to that, and a counter of sinks up against a mirrored wall on the other side. There was a big woven bin stacked with clean, simple, white towels and another empty bin next to it, presumably for the dirty ones. The light fixture was in the centre of the ceiling and flat, illuminating the whole room unevenly with bright, white light. But what was remarkable about the room was the residual magic that left Niko’s hand buzzing.

  There was so much of it in this room. As though all the magical behaviours of the people who passed in and out of these doors was concentrated here. But as Niko tried to sift through the impressions, he realized not one of them was particularly violent. Nothing stuck out as painful or sharp, nothing abrupt and dramatic. Mostly it was just the build-up of magic performed over time. On top of that, however, was a different kind of magic. And from both the sensation and the smell, Niko knew what it was.

  “Cleaning magic,” Niko said, sniffing the air and already regretting his decision. A headache began to build from the hurricane of sensation in his skull. “Like citrus and ammonia and soapy water. And the slightest hint of licorice.” He looked around. “Some major cleaning happened here.”

  Cobalt hummed softly, and the sound elicited goosebumps all over Niko’s body. “Not entirely unsurprising,” he said. “It is a bathroom, and they are selling the place.”

  Niko shook his head, walking along the cement floor. “It seems too much for that,” he said. “More like cleaning solution flooded the place than it was just cleaned for an open house.” He stopped above a drain in the floor, the concrete around it somewhat darker than elsewhere. There was a fine crack in the ground, and Niko crouched down closer to it. When he approached it, the slight tinge of a very recognizable scent reached his nose. He pulled back. Iron.

  Swiping his hand over his nose again, he traded back his senses, then he drew his hand over the crack, making another trade. Swapping the particles of air from above the crack with those caught inside it, Niko watched as a faint swath of red appeared on the air, hovering like a wisp of cloud.

  “Is that—” Cobalt began, crouching down closer to Niko.

  Niko nodded. “Blood.” Running his magically enhanced hand around the floating blood, he picked through
the sensations. “Feels like it’s from more than one person. Several samples. Fresh.”

  “So whatever happened here, many people were injured,” Cobalt surmised. Niko nodded. “But you don’t think this is where Indigo was murdered?”

  Niko shook his head. “He wasn’t killed in this room,” he said. “But based on the amount of cleaning solution, this could very well be where they cleaned it up.”

  Chapter 15

  Niko and Cobalt climbed back up to the kitchens and exited into the hall without being seen. Listening intently, Niko searched for the sound of muffled voices, but he heard nothing. Wherever Oak and the other couple had gone, it wasn’t close enough to hear them. With a gesture to Cobalt, Niko wandered down the hall and toward the solarium at the back of the house. The room was deserted, the trio having moved on to some other portion of the manor, and Niko stood in the centre of the room staring at the massive wall of windows.

  The glass extended up and over the edge of the house, creating a kind of greenhouse effect on one side of the room. Sunlight sparkled in, bright and warm, but the room still managed not to turn into an oven. The runes inscribed around the base of the room and along the edges of the windows saw to that, diffusing the sunlight softly and maintaining the temperature. The furnishing was simple enough. Lounge chairs and a glass table were set up to soak up sunlight around the edge of a small but significant crystal pool. A Fae-made waterfall trickled down the wall adjacent to the doorway, spilling calmly into the pool and no doubt also filtering the water. The pool itself looked more than deep enough to swim or lounge in, and with a wave of his hand over the water’s surface, Niko sensed the magical enhancements.

  “It’s a wellness pool,” Niko murmured to Cobalt. “They’ve become all the rage among the wealthy. Salt- and mineral-infused water baths with magical enhancements to promote healing and wellbeing.”