by E. A. Copen
William rushed in, sword raised to defend Foxglove. He swung it at the side of my face. Somehow, I got the pipe up to block. He seemed as surprised as I was, staring at it for a moment. I pushed his sword away and swept the pipe over the ground, taking his feet from under him. William went down with a loud grunt.
“Dammit, guys, I don’t want to have to hurt you!” I rolled off Foxglove, who had found his sword.
He swung it blindly at me before rolling gracefully to his feet.
I stepped back. “Listen to me. You’ve been lied to.”
“Yes, by you!” Foxglove tried for a thrust and caught my vest.
I stepped to the side and let him rip the borrowed clothing. Better to reimburse Darius than die. “No, by Titania. She’s made a fetch.”
William’s sword came down, aimed at my wrist. I pulled away but teetered on the edge of the bridge. Another step back and I’d fall into the water.
The dragon sent another blast of fire, which William deflected with his shield. The dragon seemed to aim for the Summer Knight and Foxglove rather than me. Well, at least I had one person on my side.
Foxglove was momentarily distracted, trying to get out of the way of the dragon, so I took a swing at him. Maybe a good knock to the head would get him to listen. His hand shot out at the last second, and he caught the steel pipe. Slowly, his head swiveled back around so he could glare at me. Uh-oh. Foxglove yanked on the pipe, pulling me toward him. More aptly, toward his sword. I was going to fall right on it, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Until the Winter Knight came to my rescue. Noelle swept in with a sword made of ice and thrust it into Foxglove’s arm. I hit the charred wood of the bridge and pushed myself up. Noelle stood over Foxglove who had fallen, grasping his injured arm. She lifted her sword for the killing blow.
“No, stop!” My voice bounced off the tower wall.
The crossbowmen suddenly unleashed a flurry of bolts, several of which found their mark in the attacking dragon. He roared, belched more fire, and flapped his wings to take to the air.
William turned away from the dragon and threw himself at Noelle, bashing her back with his shield. The ice sword she’d crafted shattered on impact. He hit her again, forcing her to the edge of the drawbridge, just inches from falling into the water. She teetered on the edge, then thrust herself forward to grab William. The two jerked to the side, dancing onto a charred section of bridge that crumbled under their feet. Noelle screamed and let go, but it was too late. Both of them plunged toward the river below, landing with a loud splash.
I hurried to the edge to see if I could find them, but all that remained was William’s shield, bobbing in the water.
The feel of sharp steel against my neck made me freeze.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut off your head right now, Horseman,” Foxglove growled.
I dropped the pipe and raised my hands slowly. “Titania has made a fetch that looks like me. If anyone hurt Remy, it was him. I’ve been chasing him for a week. He damn near killed me twice now.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”
“You know me.” I turned my head but felt the steel bite in just enough to break the skin. Blood trickled down to pool against the collar of my shirt.
But Foxglove cut no deeper. “I saw you kill dozens of Shadow soldiers. Saw the murder in your eyes as you let the killing heat your blood. You liked it.”
I swallowed, too terrified to speak.
Foxglove sighed. “I also saw you weep with joy the first time you held her.” He withdrew the sword. “And I have seen an even greater darkness in my queen’s eyes these last few years, Lazarus. One I do not see reflected in yours.”
My hand went to my neck and came away coated in blood. “Thanks, I think.”
“Titania has always been unstable, but the loss of her daughter has sent her into madness, I fear.” Foxglove offered me a bloody hand.
I took it and pulled myself up.
Emma finally got free from her ropes and leaned over the edge of the bridge. “Are they…?”
“Dead?” Foxglove laughed and put away his sword. “Unlikely. We’re a hard lot to kill, courtly knights most of all. Or haven’t you heard? There’s no true death in Faerie.”
“There is when Remy is here,” I said.
Foxglove met my gaze with silence.
I gritted my teeth. “She’s not here anymore, is she?”
His jaw flexed. “Her Majesty did not want to chance missing the opportunity to present her at the revel. The meeting of the courts at Mardi Gras is a very important custom, Horseman. Traditionally, it is when heirs who have come of age are affirmed. Pacts are made for the coming year. Unions planned.”
Emma stepped away from the edge of the bridge. “We have to get to her. Please, tell us what’s happened.”
Foxglove turned his face away. “I am under a direct order not to instruct the Pale Horseman as to her whereabouts. I gave the queen my oath. But I also gave the princess my solemn vow. I promised her my sword as her protector, and I failed.” He closed his eyes and made a fist. “Last time you—I mean your fetch—was here, he struck Princess Remy. They had an argument. Her Majesty wanted to marry her to Roshan to secure her alliance with the Court of Light. He argued that nothing less than the High Court would be good enough. Princess Remy became distressed and declared she would marry neither the High Prince nor Prince Roshan. Prince Roshan took offense after being rejected a third time, and I had to physically remove him from her presence when he lost control of himself.”
“Wait a goddamn minute.” I waved my hands. “Last time I saw Remy, she was a baby. She had barely begun to babble, let alone talk. She couldn’t declare anything.”
Sir Foxglove gave me a grave nod. “Some time has passed here. A great deal of it. Little Remy is no longer an infant. She has grown.”
The news went into my ears, through my brain and back out without many any sense. That couldn’t be. If she’d grown up without me, who was there when she said her first word or took her first steps? Who patched up her scrapes and bruises when she fell? Who read her bedtime stories and kissed her goodnight, and told her to hit boys back when they hit her first? Who had raised my little girl if I wasn’t there to do it?
A tingling numbness spread from my scalp down through the rest of my body. What if she thought I didn’t want to be there for her? Titania could’ve told her anything. She was so young when the fae took her away, she probably didn’t even remember me. The closest thing she’d have known was Bizarro Laz, who’d hit her. Evisceration was starting to sound too good for him.
“Laz?” Emma stopped next to me, arms crossed.
I walked over to pick up my fallen pipe, glad it was metal and not wood. I had the overwhelming urge to snap something spine-like. A wooden staff wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be close enough. “Where is she, Foxglove?”
He looked me over. “What are you going to do when you find her?”
“First, I’m going to have words with Titania and remind her what happens to Faerie queens who mess with me. Then I’m going to take her hand and walk her out of there. After that, I’m going to buy my kid an ice cream down on the riverwalk and talk to her.”
“And if she doesn’t want to go?”
I hadn’t considered that possibility, but Foxglove was right. Titania may have twisted Remy to hate me. Maybe she’d resent me for killing her mother figure, or for not being there. Either way, taking out Titania was the right thing to do. If Titania was in power, Remy would never be safe.
Then Remy would inherit the crown, I thought. Did I really want to thrust that on her? Was that my choice to make? I shook my head. One thing at a time. Titania had to pay. I needed to make sure Remy was okay, even if she wanted nothing to do with me.
I cleared my throat. “I won’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, Foxglove. If what you say is true, she’s been here in Faerie longer than she was on Earth. This is more
her home than New Orleans. If she decides to stay, I won’t force her to come with me. The one thing I am going to do, though, is find my fetch and kill him.”
Foxglove nodded, drew his sword, and placed the blade firmly in the wood. “Then you have my sword. I shall take you to your daughter.”
Chapter Nineteen
We stepped through the portal Foxglove made and into the heart of the Quarter. I immediately lifted my vest to shield my face. It was dark and there were crowds everywhere, but I didn’t want to chance being recognized.
I leaned into Emma. “We need to get off the street.”
She stepped away from me and looked at me like I’d just suggested she cut off her right hand.
I tried to swallow the hurt, but it settled in my gut and refused to move. Of all the ways I could screw things up between us, killing a god to save Remy never even crossed my mind as a possibility. We were over. I could feel it even if she wasn’t saying it. I had crossed a line. To Emma, I was no better than the scum she’d spent her career taking off the streets. A career she’d given up because of me.
The look crossed her face in an instant and disappeared as she regained control of her emotions. Emma turned to the nearest partier walking by with a red plastic cup in his hand and tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir. What day is it?”
The skinny young man raised his plastic, star-shaped sunglasses and grinned. “Oh, man. I been there. Whatchu need, friend, is another drink!”
Emma forced a false smile. “No, thanks. I just need to know the day and time.”
“Your loss, sister.” He pulled out his phone and squinted into the glow of the screen. “Monday, just before midnight.”
Monday. That meant we’d lost an entire day in a handful of hours. I turned to Foxglove.
“The Revel is at dusk tomorrow,” he confirmed. “We have time to prepare. You’ll need to gather any allies and secure more suitable attire.”
I looked down at my clothes. The sliced-up vest and white t-shirt might’ve held up at a street party, but even then, it looked like I’d been through a war zone. “Let me guess. It’s a formal masquerade?”
“You will need a suit,” said Foxglove with a frown. “And the lady will need a dress.”
“Oh, I’m not going.” Emma fidgeted with her fingers, refusing to look at me. “I think it’s time I told my family I was okay. Laz, this has gone too far for me.”
“Emma, Remy needs you.”
Emma shook her head. “No, she doesn’t. This isn’t something I can help with. I…I need some space. Some time to think.”
“Of course.” I tried to sound accommodating, but inside, I was breaking apart. There had to be something I could do to make this right, some way to convince her I’d done the right thing for the right reasons. It would all work out in the end. Couldn’t she see I didn’t have a choice? I had to kill Hades for Remy. I’d have done the same for her. Knowing that just made it hurt worse. This was goodbye, and we both knew it. “I’ll catch up with you after. Let you know we made it out okay.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded, raising a hand to wave. “I’ll just catch an Uber back. See you around.”
Emma walked into the crowd of drunks and disappeared.
I stayed where I was staring after her, my chest aching like I’d been stabbed. No, this hurt worse, the kind of pain no medicine could touch. I’d been stabbed enough times to know.
Foxglove’s hand came down hard on my shoulder, prompting me to flinch. “She will come around.”
I shook my head. “Not this time. I really screwed up, man. But it doesn’t help Remy to focus on it. We need a place to lay low.”
Darius’ place was out. So was my house. Emma’s definitely was. That only left one place in town, someplace I really didn’t want to go considering my current company. I eyed the Summer fae. What the hell? Everything had already gone to shit. What else could go wrong?
“Foxglove,” I said, gripping his shoulder, “Let’s go get a beer.”
Paula’s sat down a side street just outside the Quarter. It wasn’t marked by any signs on the street. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d drive right by, which was exactly how Paula liked it. Her bar was a dive with flickering neon in the windows and a run-down exterior. She’d replaced the plate glass window more than once since I’d known her, and the jukebox only worked if you hit it just right with your fist.
I stood outside the bar next to Sir Foxglove in a light misting rain, watching the neon flash. Shadows moved behind the windows in warm light. Even without stepping through the door, I could smell the biting burn of alcohol in the air mixing with chalk, wood polish, and sweat. The break of balls on the pool table, the sudden eruption of laughter from the group of burly men drinking in the corner, the heaviness of Paula’s glare as she stared down the quiet drinker sitting on the edge of the bar… Paula’s was a second home. I just hoped the fact that Paula was fae wouldn’t complicate things. She could bend the rules, but she couldn’t break them.
Nothing to do but swallow my apprehension and try. I had nowhere else to go.
The door handle was cool in my hands, almost icy. I squeezed the latch like the trigger of a gun and pushed the door in. Familiar sounds and scents flooded over me as I stepped in, then ground to a halt when Foxglove ducked in next to me. Chairs creaked as everyone turned to take in the newcomer.
Paula stopped wiping down the bar and slowly reached behind it. When her hand came back up, she was gripping a double-barrel shotgun. She placed it firmly on the bar. “I see anyone’s hand go for their phone, he loses it.”
Vince, one of Paula’s regular bouncers, grunted at me. “You got a price on your head, Laz. Thirty grand. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Got nowhere else to go.” I turned away from him to face the patrons of the bar.
The crowd didn’t vary much. Every face in the crowd was familiar. I knew their names, their favorite drinks, their troubles. After living above the bar for years, and using the place as my preferred watering hole, the men in there were practically family. Yet I saw anger in their eyes, distrust. Half of them would’ve called to turn me in if Paula hadn’t gotten out the gun. The other half would’ve waited until they could get to a payphone to do it anonymously.
I stepped away from the door, pacing to the center of the bar. “You might’ve heard some things about me. That I was taking people, turning them into zombies, hurting folks. I’ve made no secret over the years about what I can do. Make no mistake, I could’ve done all of that at any time. But I didn’t. You all know me.” I turned so I could address the other side of the room. “Jazz, who was it that helped you with the ghost in your hunting cabin?”
He nodded gravely and replied in a deep voice. “You did.”
I gestured to a thin man with gray braids, a blue bandana, and a long white beard. “Charlie, when the monster in your daughter’s closet turned out to be a ghoul, who helped you move the thing out?”
He lowered his eyes to study his beer.
“And Mariann—” I gestured to a heavyset woman with curly red hair wearing a red plaid overshirt. “When your truck was cursed by a witch, who was it that drove halfway across Louisiana at two in the morning to give you that gris-gris bag?”
Mariann turned away and tucked into her drink.
“If you’re trying to convince us that you’re a good guy again, you should’ve come alone,” Paula said. “I heard you were working for Summer’s nutcase queen again, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
I turned my back to the door and faced Paula. “I’m not working for Summer.”
She nodded to Foxglove. “You’ve got a funny way of proving it, bringing along one of Titania’s generals.”
Foxglove’s armor clinked as he stepped forward. “Lazarus and I share a common goal. We seek to protect the Summer Princess. She was taken against her will by a fetch Titania constructed, a fetch which has committed atrocities wearing the guise of the Pale Horseman.”
Paula’s eyes narrowed. Her fingers tightened around the stock of the shotgun. “You killed friends of mine.”
“I’ve killed and maimed many in battle, m’lady,” Foxglove confirmed. “And I would do it again to defend my home, but I will not cut down another soul for Titania’s madness. Set aside whatever quarrel we may have in the name of future peace, I beg you.”
“Peace?” Paula rolled her eyes and laughed. “Come on now. I don’t give a rat’s ass about war and peace in Faerie mostly. But I like the kid, so I’d offer you help if it were in my power. Unfortunately,…” Paula frowned. “I can’t openly help a Summer fae, not when we’re at war. My court would have a hissy fit if they found out. I can’t help you, Laz. And I can’t help your daughter, not without pissing people off. I’m sorry.”
My heart sank. I’d played my last ace, and it still wasn’t enough. We’d have to spend the night on the street where we’d be out in the open for Bizarro Laz and his zombies to kill. Not only that, but I had the human authorities to worry about. If there was a bounty on my head, everybody and their brother would be looking to cash in. I’d be in custody by dawn.
“There is another option,” Foxglove said, turning to me. “As one of the Four Horsemen, it is within your power to declare ownership over a space. Such a move would absolve Paula of any wrongdoing in the sight of her court and allow her to freely assist.”
I blinked and looked at Paula. “Is that true?”
She sighed. “Sort of. Technically speaking, you’re on equal footing if not above the Faerie queens, and each of them has a sanctuary space on Earth, a place of power so to speak. Neutral ground where anyone can come to speak to them without fear of death. A sort of courtly space, complete with retainers to fill it. But it’s usually a church or an important shrine, not a bar. It’s supposed to be a place with significance.”
I glanced around. How many hours had I spent drinking myself into a stupor at the bar, listening to Paula tell me to pick myself up by my bootstraps? How many people had I hustled at pool? It was how I’d paid my rent for the first three months I lived there. I’d come into the bar bleeding all over only to have Paula patch me up. When a nightmare Titan had been hunting me, Paula’s was the only safe place. I had lived and laughed and loved in that building more than any other since getting out of prison. “I can’t think of another place more significant. If you’re not objecting to it, Paula, I’m down.”