Institute of the Shadow Fae Box Set

by C. N. Crawford

  “What else do we need to know about him?” I asked.

  “Arubian hunts the night skies, feasting off dread,” said Ruadan.

  I shrugged. “I mean, he sounds fun, I guess. Sounds like your kind of people. Since you’re all fomoire.”

  Ruadan cut me a sharp look.

  Melusine raised her hand again. “I got this one, too. One, he’s got a whole pack of dogs, takes ’em right through the night sky. Two, he hates fire. He sees flames, he gets scared. Three, you’re gonna need a strong fire demon to get through his glamour. Burn a hole right in it with the flames of Emerazel. Problem is, you’re all Shadow Fae. Fire’s not really your thing. Am I right?”

  Ciara. We needed Ciara for this. I raked a hand through my hair. “Okay. We have to access some fire magic.”

  It was nearly dawn, and I desperately wanted to go to sleep, but there wasn’t enough time to take a break.

  “We don’t have time to find a fire demon,” said Ruadan.

  Queen Macha cocked her head. “What exactly is the rush? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’ll get you up to speed,” I said. “Baleros nailed a hand to the door with a note, and it said we have a day to deliver Ruadan to him, or he’ll unleash a plague. To prove he’s serious, he already unleashed a small one. He also killed Grand Master Savus and stole the mist army. Your son is the new Grand Master, minus an army. Baleros has acquired a whole bunch of human soldiers who think they’re dead, and they have a terrible habit of blowing themselves up.”

  “He’s been a very naughty boy,” said the queen. “How did he unleash the Plague, exactly? I know of no creature who can do that except the Angel of Death. And Adonis is locked in another realm. Or did he escape?”

  Ruadan stepped forward. “It’s possible Adonis was able to get out of his locked world, or that he slipped through the portal after my attack. Both are my enemies, both on my kill list. They may have formed an alliance.”

  Darkness swarmed in my mind, and the scent of myrrh pooled around me. My father’s scent.

  Maybe I’d be seeing him soon.

  Chapter 84

  No. It couldn’t be happening—they couldn’t be working together.

  “We have no idea how Baleros plans to do it,” I said a little too sharply. “Just that he does. It could be a magical spell for all we know. He used magic to create the jackdaws.”

  “The strategy is simple,” said Queen Macha. “Baleros is a traitor to the Shadow Fae and an enemy of Emain. We must amass an army of all the world’s Shadow Fae and surround Arubian’s palace.” Her cheeks reddened, eyes gleaming. “We crush our enemies. Drag Baleros out, bring him to me so I may tear out his spine and whip his arse with it. I will need to feast on his ignominious defeat!”

  Her shouts rang off the stone walls. I wasn’t entirely sure she was thinking clearly right now.

  Ruadan shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. Baleros has a lumen stone. If he sees us coming with an entire army behind us, he’ll be gone within a heartbeat. We have to go in silently, move in the shadows.”

  “We don’t even know that he’s there for certain,” said Aengus. “If we keep hidden, we might be able to find out more information.”

  Queen Macha’s lips curled back from her teeth. “I. Am. Hungry.” This time, her voice came out like a low hiss. I had the distinct impression that she couldn’t think clearly when she was hungry.

  “Fire magic,” I said again. “I know where we can get a demon.”

  Aengus glared at me. “How will we summon this demon?”

  “Mobile phone. Get the portal ready, Ruadan. This is happening.”

  Aengus, Ruadan, and I stood under an oak tree, bodies dripping wet. I shuddered, hugging myself. I really wanted some fae technomancer to create a type of portal that did not involve icy water, so we could arrive somewhere dry for once. But that was a problem for another day—a day when we were not facing an apocalyptic event within the next sixteen hours.

  A pale flash of movement caught my attention through the trees, a glimpse of ginger hair.

  I smiled as Ciara crossed to us, her feet crunching over the leaves. I wrapped my arms around her, then she cast a wary look at the two other Shadow Fae.

  “It’s okay, Ciara,” I said. “We’re all allies here. No one is arresting anyone, anyway.”

  “Well, in that case, it’s good to see you all. How’s the palace? I’ve been living under a car. I’m not complaining, but I have been living literally underneath a car. Not even in it. I can’t get the doors open, so I just crawl between the tires. This morning I had to fight a pigeon for a chicken bone. So that was my day. But I bet the palace is real nice. Real beds. Right? You all sleep in real beds? Do you have to fight diseased scavenger birds for your food, or can you just eat it right off the plate?”

  “Is there a point to this?” asked Aengus. “I thought you said she was a fire demon.”

  “We’ll get you some food when we’re done with this,” I promised. “Unlike Ruadan, Ciara feeds on actual food.”

  I didn’t know why that had come out so angrily. What was I doing getting mad at Ruadan for keeping secrets? I had plenty of my own.

  Ruadan kept his eyes on Ciara, ignoring me completely. “The Shadow Fae are promising you immunity from your transgressions if you will aid us in our mission.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, sure. But I hope you’re serious about the food.”

  “And a bed,” I offered.

  “In a locked room,” Ruadan added. “We can’t have fire demons roaming around the Institute.”

  “Locked room is better than living under a car,” she muttered. “What’s the job?”

  “We need to get through the glamour outside the palace,” said Ruadan. “And we need your fire magic for that.”

  She scratched a freckled cheek. “I don’t really have great control over it, per se.”

  “Look,” said Aengus. “We know literally no other fire demons, or we would have asked them. You’ll just have to do your best.”

  “To be honest, the only time I used it was when Baleros had captured me.”

  I thought I understood where she was going with this. “You thought you were about to die then, right?” Exactly how my death powers worked.

  Her brow furrowed. “I did, yeah. Obviously we can’t make that—”

  “Ruadan can make it happen,” I interrupted.

  “If I know that he’s faking it, I won’t really believe I’m about to die.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “He will dredge up your worst fears and just shove them down your throat until your mind is about to break. It’s one of his favorite pastimes.”

  Did he feed off fear, like Arubian?

  “When we get through the glamour,” said Ruadan, “we will find ourselves in the grounds that surround Arubian’s palace. I don’t know what to expect, except that Baleros supplies him with humans to feed off. We may find Baleros within these grounds, or we can interrogate Arubian until he tells us more.”

  Aengus’s green eyes pierced the dark. “Once we get through the glamour, we’ll need to be discreet and blend in with whatever is going on around us.”

  “And while you’re blending in,” added Ruadan, “I’ll dash around the palace, searching for Baleros.”

  Ciara cross her arms, beaming. “If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s being a normal human. I believed I was a normal human for years, didn’t know any different till I blew up in the Tower. I spent years doing normal human things like drawing my friends on the wall and hosting pimento cheese parties.”

  The two Shadow Fae nodded, and I didn’t alert them to the fact that even when Ciara had believed she was human, literally no one had thought she was normal. They had no idea.

  “See?” I said. “She’ll be fine. Totally normal human.”

  “Let’s go.” Ruadan took off into the forest. Since we were supposed to be discreet, we had no orb of silver light to lead our way here. In any case, dawn would be breaking s
oon.

  “Why do you always carry that bag with you?” asked Aengus.

  “Because, Aengus. For eight years, I had nothing, and now I carry my own sweets with me.”

  “Sweets,” he snorted.

  I pulled one of the straps off my shoulder and shoved my hand into the bag. I snatched a cherry lollipop and handed it to him. As we walked in the forest, he unwrapped it and frowned at it. It became clear to me that Aengus had never had a lollipop before.

  “You lick it, Aengus.”

  He waggled an eyebrow at me like I’d said something completely obscene, which I suppose was understandable. Then, he stuck out his tongue and licked the lollipop. Quite frankly, it did look completely obscene the way he did it, and I suppressed a smile.

  Ciara held out a hand, and I gave her a butterscotch lollipop.

  Around us, thick tree roots covered the path, and dark shapes lined either side of our way. As the first ruddy rays of dawn began to brighten the sky, I started to make out the shapes more clearly. We were walking past old, Victorian graves—crooked statues, broken crosses lining our path. At one point, this must have been a stately cemetery, well-tended. But over the years, the trees and shrubs had started to break the stones apart, shift the bodies out of place. Time had run riot around here, the ground bulging and disturbing the dead.

  The plants here looked unfamiliar—their stems thick and tough, spiked. I had the sense that they grew only over places of death—fomoire in their own way, feasting off misery.

  We skirted the edge of a clearing, where a man sat smoking a pipe. The pink glow of dawn illuminated his scruffy face, and he was singing a Beyoncé song to himself. He didn’t notice us at all.

  Just on the other side of the clearing stood an abandoned church. When had it last been used? World War II, maybe? The windows had been smashed and boarded up, probably bombed in the war.

  I was about to move on when Ruadan stopped, tracing his fingertips over the air. “We’re here. The glamour.”

  My mother had been an expert in glamour, but that magical gene had passed me by. I couldn’t even see it.

  Ruadan turned, surveying the brightening forest around us.

  “Anyone around?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Just the drunk human we passed. We’re fine.” He turned his attention to Ciara. “We’ll need your fire to get through this.”

  She popped her lollipop out of her mouth. “You gonna hit me with your scare magic?”

  Aengus and I took a few paces back—then a few more, to avoid the intensity of Ruadan’s magic. I wanted to get hit with neither fire nor terror right now.

  When I was about twenty feet away from them, darkness bloomed around Ruadan, the shadows tinged with faint glimmers of stars.

  Ciara started to shake, her jaw dropping. She clamped a trembling hand over her mouth and screamed into it. Then, flames erupted from her body. Ruadan shifted away.

  A burst of fire climbed twelve feet in the air, a wall of flames. The air hissed and sizzled. Through the inferno, a gap opened up in the glamour, large enough to drive a train through.

  “Now!” said Ruadan. “Get through!”

  Ciara was still screaming into her hand.

  I ran toward the gap and pushed her in, wincing as her body seared my palms a little. We rushed through the opening into a vast, grassy field. A carpet of wood-sorrel and yellow archangels grew among the tall grasses.

  And at the far end of the field loomed a palace of white stone.

  Chapter 85

  I let out a long, slow breath. I’d never had any idea that this was here.

  “Nice work, Ciara,” I said. Then, I leaned in and whispered, “What did Ruadan make you see?”

  She licked her lips. “Fox in a wedding dress, walking on her hind legs through the forest. Her true love left her at the altar, and she wanted revenge. She carried a bouquet of dried lilies.”

  I frowned, unsettled. “That’s very ... specific.”

  “She wanted to carve my eyes straight out of my head with a whittling knife,” she trilled, trying to sound cheerful. “Like my grandaddy did to that fox I caught in a trap. He wanted to teach me a lesson. Golly, have you ever heard a fox scream?”

  “Let’s not talk about this anymore.” Inside Ciara’s head was a very dark place, and I didn’t want to spend much time in there.

  Up ahead, a small crowd of people were stumbling over the grass under the rose and violet sky. I could hear their laughter from here.

  Were they having fun? Considering Arubian fed off terror, I had expected to find horror here, not laughter.

  They moved around each other, laughter growing louder. The only thing strange about them was an oddly lumbering gait, as if they had weights attached to their feet.

  As we moved closer, I started to make out their clothing—tiny shorts, sparkly tops, flashes of rainbow, striped socks pulled up to their knees. It took me a little while to piece together what was going on here.

  What in the world…?

  Arms whirling, they moved over the grass, giggling.

  Ruadan leaned down, whispering close to my ear. “Can you help me interpret this? I don’t understand.”

  “Rollerskating,” I whispered. “I think we may be going to a roller disco.”

  I bit my lip, imagining Ruadan in a pair of tiny striped shorts and rollerskates. I tried so hard to suppress the laughter that I snorted.

  He shot me a sharp look. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just really looking forward to this blending in part. But we’re going to need to steal their clothes, so can you put them to sleep?”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than violet-tinged magic spiraled out of Ruadan’s chest. It snaked over the grass and swept around the humans. Instantly, his sleep magic began to take effect. Their arms windmilled around for a few moments until they toppled over into the grass.

  When we reached them, I surveyed their prone bodies and their tight roller disco clothes. I looked up at Ruadan and Aengus. “I don’t think any of this will fit you two.”

  “These clothes are ridiculous,” muttered Ruadan.

  I started stripping the shorts off one of the girls. I did my best to shield my body and hers as I traded my drenched black dress for her sparkly halter top and shorts. Then, I slid out of my shoes and pulled on her rollerskates. I was vaguely aware of Ruadan rifling through my bug-out bag, but I kept my attention focused on trying to keep my nipples hidden while I slipped into the halter top.

  When I looked up again, Ciara had dressed herself in a red bikini top and glittery blue shorts, along with a pair of rollerskates. Already, she looked like a proper expert, shaking her hips to a distant beat as she rolled over the grass.

  Ruadan and Aengus had simply ripped the wheel sets off two pairs of skates, and secured them to their shoes with the duct tape from my bag.

  I frowned at them. They were still dressed like fae. We needed a hipster rollerskating look here.

  I pulled an elastic band off my wrist, then crossed to Ruadan. “Lean down.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, Ruadan. Trust me.”

  He leaned down a bit, as if bowing, and I gathered his soft blond hair up into a messy man bun. I took a step back to survey it. That was all it took to make him look like a hipster.

  “Good,” I said. “Perfect.”

  He growled low. He wasn’t sure what I’d done to him or why, but he didn’t like it.

  I opened up my bug-out bag for a quick review of my weapons before we went into battle. A few daggers, aerosolized deodorant, and a lighter.

  When I looked up again, I found Ciara hacking away at Aengus’s trousers to create a pair of short shorts. He glowered at her as she worked.

  I took a deep breath, my pulse already racing in anticipation of our encounter with Arubian. I had to come to this thing sword-free. That was the problem about covert missions—you could never bring your favorite weapons, and you had to
rely on a backpack full of knives and deodorant.

  “Let’s go,” said Ruadan.

  I rolled over the grass, using my arms to steady myself a bit. It took me a few minutes before I was moving smoothly, and then I started to get into it. I could have used these things in the gladiator ring.

  Charcoal-grey clouds began gathering on the horizon, blotting out the rising sun. They seemed to be moving unnaturally fast, roiling and writhing like a living thing.

  I glanced over at Ruadan, who was already ripping the wheels off the bottom of his shoes. I should’ve known that wouldn’t last long.

  “What about your disguise?” I asked.

  “I’m the Wraith,” he said. “I don’t need a disguise. No one can see me, and I’ll be mostly sneaking around the palace unseen.”

  Fair enough.

  Aengus looked furious, stumbling over the grass in his rollerskates and tiny shorts. Ciara had also forced his enormous chest into a rainbow halter top.

  A flash of white lightning cracked the darkening sky, followed by a boom of thunder. The air felt charged, heavy.

  As we moved closer to the palace, another flash speared the sky—horizontal this time, slashing the dark clouds open with its light.

  “Heat lightning,” said Ciara.

  I frowned. “It’s not even that hot.”

  I rolled over the bumpy terrain, and pale flashes of light streaked faster across the sky. The hair on my nape stood on end.

  By the time we reached the palace itself, the lightning had picked up pace, pulsing in the clouds as fast as a heartbeat, fast as neuronal connections. The palace itself looked completely undefended—no moat, no gate, just a gaping open archway that led into a courtyard. Through the archway, I could hear the deep, throbbing bass of a disco song. The sound of the Bee Gees seemed an odd contrast to the grotesque, humanoid gargoyles looming over the archway. They jutted from the ancient palace walls. Men with gaping leers, grinning as they pulled open their mouths or ripped out their own hearts.

  “Ummm...” said Ciara. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here.”