by T. G. Ayer
The front of the building was dark when I knocked on the outer door, the windows covered in dust, hiding much of the interior of the store. It didn’t take long for a light to glow from inside when Kai opened the inner door to the apartment at the back of the building.
As she reached the door, I waggled my fingers in an all-too-preppy wave and got a pleasant grin in exchange. She unlocked the door and pretended to scan the street as if expecting someone, her movements over acted as she hid a cheeky grin.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “No, Saleem is not with me.”
Kai’s eyebrows rose, and she held her hands out in mock defense. “Hey. I didn’t say anything.”
I gave a sharp snort. “You didn’t have to.”
While Kai locked up, I made for the back of the store and crossed the hall to the kitchen where the aroma of takeout Chinese tempted me from a bag on the fake-wood Formica table. I found a chair, side-stepping Kai’s satchel which she’d dropped on the floor beside the kitchen counter.
I slid my jacket over the back of the chair and grabbed a box of noodles, digging in with fervor as hunger rose within me. When Kai entered the kitchen, I was chewing with the concentration of the starved, my chopsticks in the air, my eyes half-closed.
“What?” I lifted my brow, trying to look innocent. “I just got back from a case, and I haven’t eaten in thirty-six hours.”
“Good thing I bought enough for two.” Kai let out a sigh and joined me at the table. With the second set of chopsticks in hand, she attacked the meal as enthusiastically as I was.
I frowned, noting the two chopsticks, then scanned the kitchen. “You expecting company?”
With a shrug, Kai said. “Lily. Usually. But she seemed a bit down today.”
Setting the chopsticks on a paper towel, I asked, “How is she doing?”
I’d seen the devastation in Lily’s eyes when I’d brought Anjelo’s body to Kai’s house in Tukats. Anjelo had been Lily’s world, and perhaps being the bearer of bad news for the poor girl had been the reason I’d felt partly guilty. I’d kept in touch with Kai, messaging back and forth about Lily and her recovery, very glad that Kai had been open to keeping me informed regarding the girl’s recovery.
“I’m not sure. Some days she seems fine, smiling and happy. Other days, she’s someone else entirely. She had a lot on her mind, even before losing Anjelo. Now, I’m afraid her load might be too heavy.”
“But she isn’t alone,” I said. It was the truth.
“No, she isn’t. But Lily isn’t known for taking advice, or for accepting help. All I can do is keep her busy, keep her feeling needed and necessary.”
“Well, you know I’m here. You need me to help with Lily? Just yell.”
Kai’s face darkened, and I could tell she was troubled, but I didn’t probe any further. She reached for the second box and ripped it open before we both got stuck in. As we ate, we talked about Saleem, Logan, and Kai’s recent jobs at the Elite.
I’d considered confiding in Kai about the Shadowman’s attack, but I wasn’t sure what benefit I’d get from it. I wasn’t looking for sympathy, or to have Kai join me on a hunt for the guy. In the end, I chose to keep it to myself. At least for now.
Kai also asked about Ari, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to discuss it. I felt like if I mentioned anything that had to do with Samuel, I was likely to fall apart. I didn’t have time for tears. I needed to be focused. On target. No time for feelings. Not until this whole shit show was done.
Coming here to see Kai felt like a reprieve, a short island of calm until I had to head back into the insanity that was currently my life.
Once we’d finished the last bits of food and had cleaned the table and thrown out the trash, we settled down, and I sat back with a sigh. “So, what can I do?”
“I need you to help me track Tara down.”
My eyebrows bobbed, surprised and curious. “Sure, I can,” I said, a little hesitant now. Tara had been gone awhile, attending to Fae business. She’d left no forwarding address or method to contact her, and I questioned the wisdom of tracking her if she didn’t want to be found. She wasn’t our friend anymore. She was the Fae Queen. But even as I thought about it, I realized that if Kai was going to the level of asking me to track Tara down it meant that something bad was going down. “I’ll need something that belongs to her. You know the process.”
Kai let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I’m not sure what I can give you. Tara didn’t leave much behind.”
I grinned. There was always something, even when people thought there was nothing. “I do have an idea, but I’m thinking you may not like it.”
“Hit me with it. I can take it.”
Clearing my throat, I said, “There’s a bathroom somewhere here, right?” Kai’s nod confirmed. “So, point me to the shower. I need the drain.”
Her face crumpled in disgust. “Tara’s going to just love this.”
I shrugged. “You want to find her?”
“Fine. Let’s just keep this between us.”
“Let's hope that Tara forgot to clean the drains.”
Kai led me to the bathroom midway down the hall and pushed the door open. The bathroom was clean and appeared barely used. When Kai thrust the curtains aside, I confirmed my suspicion. The claw-footed tub was dry as a bone.
I leaned over the tub, reached for the pair of latex gloves I usually kept in my jacket, then winced slightly when I realized I’d left it in the kitchen. Just as I was about to stand to go and fetch it, a latex glove appeared before me, as if by magic. I took it, shaking my head at Kai’s perfect timing.
I dragged the glove on with a snap then swirled my finger around the drain. Thankfully, I didn’t need to do much more than that. When I withdrew my finger, I found four dark strands of hair clinging to it.
Perfect.
“That’s less than I would have expected,” I said, my forehead creasing with a frown.
“That’s more than what I would have expected,” Kai replied, her eyes flickering with surprise. “Trust me, Tara is a clean freak. This is unexpected.”
I pushed to my feet, and pain sliced through me. Grunting, I straightened. “Let's hope the hair belongs to Tara or her mother.”
“It's Tara’s,” she said. “Gracie has much shorter hair.”
Perfect.
I formed a small wad with the hair as I headed to the kitchen. then removed the glove keeping the strands protected within the latex. I set the glove on the table and sat. Kai joined me and waited in silence as I took a deep breath.
I shouldn’t be tracking again so soon, more because it would take a toll on my energy especially coming after the healer had done his thing. He’d used his magic to heal the muscles and to close the wound, but my body would still need the energy to keep knitting damaged muscles together and to supply new cells fast enough for quick repair. Mages were still human after all.
I took a single strand from the glove and—holding it tightly—I slipped into the ether, breathing deeply to draw as much power from the energy around me as I could. I’d last longer if I used a different power source than my internal one. Then, there within the ether, ethereal energy crackled and sang around me.
I searched the ether, looking for the feedback from the hair but I got nothing. Not even a flicker of energy that would indicate Tara’s existence. I shook my head and opened my eyes, coming back to my body with a sudden jolt.
“What happened? Did it work?” Kai asked. She was bent forward, as if hoping I’d been faking my disappointment to tease her.
I shook my head. “No. Her trail feels blocked somehow. The hair is biological, and with most species, it works—even though they are technically dead epithelials—but for Tara, I drew a complete blank.” I frowned so hard my skull hurt.
“Is it because she’s Fae?”
I wasn’t sure, but it was possible, so I nodded. “Most likely it is. Fae are part of nature. It means their existence is one with the earth and all its elements
. Fae of the land would be hard to track using earth or plants, and Fae of the water would be impossible to track using water.”
Kai nodded. She looked so disappointed that I just knew there was no way I’d stop now. I couldn’t let her down.
“So, we are up the Veil without a paddle,” she said softly.
I grinned at that. “Unless you have something else that belongs to her that we can use to track her.”
“Like what?” Kai snapped. Then she smiled an apology. She didn't need to though. I understood her frustration.
I shrugged, and then asked, “She’s Earth Fae, right?”
With a nod, Kai said, “Yes. Metal to be specific. She uses her powers to make weapons.” Kai’s eyes widened as she straightened. “Wait. Can Fae be tracked using their specific essence?”
I wasn’t sure but nodded slowly as I suspected where she may be going with her question. “I don’t have a shit-ton of experience with tracking Fae, Kai. I can only assume that the Fae essence is more or less equivalent to human biological data.”
“So, if you can track a human using their blood or tears or skin, then you should be able to track a Fae using the traces that they leave behind of themselves,” said Kai, her brow furrowed. “And I know for a fact that Tara leaves a trace of her essence within her weapons. It’s something that she often worried about. Very few people know about it though.”
“Why did she worry about it? I thought making weapons was her thing?”
Kai shook her head. “It was. But her Court disapproved of her work here because of her essence remaining within each weapon she made. They were afraid it could be used against her.”
“They are probably right.” I found myself concerned. If I tracked her and it worked, then it meant others could too—if they had the means. “If we can track her using her essence, then the Fae Court could be proved correct. But, there aren’t many teleporters around with my skill. So it’s not as if every tracker would be able to find her just because they looked.”
Kai sighed. “I’m not sure how much she understood of how it worked, but what I do know is she did have a kind of mental link to every weapon she created. I once gave her a tiny sliver of metal, and she read it well enough to know that she was the one who’d created the weapon.”
“Kai, that could work both ways. It could very well be that as a Metal Fae, Tara was just able to track the life of the metal by tapping into her Fae Ethereal power.”
Kai brightened, a look of excitement flickering in her eyes as she nodded. “I have a couple of knives that Tara made.” She bent to her satchel on the floor and dug inside before pulling out a wide-bladed, curved knife. She held it out to me, handle first.
“Good. This should work.” Taking the knife, I flipped it over and inspected the sharpened blade. “Impeccable workmanship. So smooth.”
Kai grinned, her eyes gleaming with pride.
“Incredible,” I said softly. It wasn’t often that you came across a weapon that was created with such precision, and especially one that was also so beautiful. But there was no time to waste drooling over weapons. I refocused and flipped the weapon over before sitting back again.
I slipped into the ether and inhaled sharply at what hovered in front of me. Tara’s feedback thread was strong and glowed with a silver-gray shimmer—kind of appropriate given she was the Iron Fae queen. “I see her.” I paused, studying the strength of the pulsing thread. “She’s alive and well, although she appears to be stressed.”
“Where?”
I followed the thread, and it took me to a street in a residential area in what looked suspiciously like Boston. “A house. A brownstone.”
“Can you see a street name? A house number?”
I drifted closer and found myself inside the front room. I made for the window, hoping to find a street sign or some marker outside. “Outside the window…the house across the street is 1270. I can’t see a street name.”
“Anything else significant?”
“There’s a magnolia tree right outside the window. Nothing in the room that could tell me where she is, though. And she’s alone. It’s ok. I’ll project and have a look outside, get us a street name. Be back in a jiffy.”
I followed the link to Tara and projected outside the building to scan the street for more details. A few yards up was a street sign, and my eyes widened when I confirmed I was standing on a brownstone street in Boston.
The seat of the Royal Fae was in Boston?
Guess you learn something new every day.
I returned to my body and blinked. “You going to fly out to Boston or do you need a ride?”
“Boston?” Kai’s laugh was filled with relief. “A ride would be lovely, thanks.”
Chapter 32
I’d offered Kai a lift to Boston without thinking. The words had come automatically, and I found I was unable to retract the offer after my offer had left my mouth.
I didn’t want to have to explain why I now couldn’t take her. It would bring up too many questions. Questions I was not yet ready to answer.
Instead, I jumped Kai to the street in Boston and tried to draw a glamor around me. Glamor was a magic inherent in supernatural beings, but most mages had to develop the ability through training or magic, depending on their abilities.
My glamor appeared as a strange reddish smoke that reminded me all too much of the blood from my veins.
We had arrived on a leafy cobbled street and turned to stare at the row of brownstones before us. The street shimmered in my vision, and I felt myself beginning to pass out.
Shit.
This is not what I needed.
I felt my vision darken. My fading energy threatened to put a stop to any more jumping. If I didn’t get stronger fast enough, I’d be useless to Kai.
I fisted my fingers and felt a spark of pain in one of the damaged fingernails. Perfect. I grabbed the damaged finger and pressed, the pain helping me pull myself straight out of passing out.
Kai headed toward the stairs, reaching for the banister before pausing. She glanced over her shoulder just as I pressed my finger again and brushed my hair away from my face. My fingers shivered with the pain, and I hoped that Kai hadn’t picked up on how weirdly I was behaving.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I shook my head. Not going to be easy to explain things to her now, so I just said the first thing that popped into my head. “Nothing. I just thought that maybe you’d want to be alone with Tara?”
Kai paused “Maybe. But not for too long.” She glanced up and down the street, her stiff spine confirming she was still on guard. “Is there somewhere you could hide safely and project into the room?”
“You don’t need your privacy?” All I wanted was to leave. Part of me felt this was taking too long, but I needed to get back to Drake too.
Kai let out a strange laugh. “Tara is my best friend, not my lover.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I’d meant. Too late to take it back now. Not that a person’s choice of sexual partner mattered to me.
Kai may have realized she’d come to the wrong conclusion. Given how much I was keeping from her, I did not blame her one bit. She twisted her lips then said, “Of course, you may be right about privacy. Tara may not want our discussion overheard, but you and I are here on an important errand. It’s not personal, and I hardly think she’d mind you listening in.”
I wasn’t so sure, and I knew I looked it. My friendship with Tara had been long, and strong, but in a different way to hers and Kai’s. I wasn’t a possessive friend, but neither did I want to appear indifferent. It was a slippery slope.
I watched as Kai climbed the stairs, glanced back at me and then knocked on the door using a giant brass knocker in the form of a lion’s head.
I hid in the shadows and projected inside the room, watching as Kai spoke to the woman who answered the door, a woman who looked suspiciously like Gracie, Tara’s mother.
After much discussion, the woman headed into t
he room across the hall, and I drifted closer. Tara emerged, and she and Kai embraced. Then they entered the front room where they discussed the dying of Chicago’s Great Ash Tree.
Blood rushed into my ears as I listened, understanding now what Kai was working on and how important it had been that I help find Tara. In that moment, I wondered if there would ever be a time when I would have a break.
When Tara confessed that the Boston Ash was also sick, I knew the situation was dire. Someone was killing the trees that were the very epitome of magic.
Soon another Fae entered the room, bringing an icy chill to the air. Neither Kai nor Tara seemed overly fond of the man. I didn’t think I would be either. He set my nerves on edge, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was Winter Fae.
When the odious Fae left, I realized the two women were ready to leave. I felt boosted now, knowing the importance of the jumps I was about to do.
I altered my projection and jumped to the room, appearing beside Kai and Tara. Tara smiled when she saw me, her eyes gleaming with a mutual affection that went back years.
I offered them each a hand. “We'd better be going. I’ll drop you off at the tree, then I have an errand to run.”
The women nodded, and I transported them a block away from the Chicago Ash Tree. I’d expected the jump to be taxing, but oddly enough I felt a burst of energy, as if I was suddenly fueled by something, pushed into a higher gear by no action of my own.
We materialized in an alley, using the shadows to remain unseen.
I felt invigorated as my feet touched solid ground, but I kept my expression neutral. It was a pity that I couldn’t stay, but I had to drop off the vacutainer sooner rather than later.
I needed to know those results as soon as possible because my gut was certain of one thing.
Samuel had been murdered.
Chapter 33
I jumped straight to the Elite HQ, again surprised as I felt infused by energy. Was this a different aspect of my teleportation power? It was unusual enough to earmark for further investigation.