I sucked in a breath and clung to the railing. My heart sounded in my ears, nearly drowning out Lila’s next words.
“The guards on duty during the quake reported to me immediately.” She turned her haunted emerald gaze on me. “They said they saw movement below.”
3
In the silence following Lila's statement, I could barely focus beyond the rushing in my ears. “Movement in Senka’s tomb?”
Lila nodded, clutching at the railing as if it were the only thing holding her on her feet. “Inside her tomb.”
“Has anyone gone down there?”
“Please.” Lila rolled her eyes. “Nobody is brave enough for that.”
“We are a law enforcement bureau of the hardest officers in the Hollow, and you’re telling me no one has the balls to go down there?” I scoffed, disgusted.
“You’re not afraid?” Lila’s voice was low and even as she gazed down at the cracked stones.
“She’s our princess,” I snapped. “Not a boogeyman.”
Smiling sadly, Lila turned away from the tomb and headed for the elevator. “But is she?”
I barely made it to Wang Chee before they closed, but I did, tires squealing on my bike as I skidded to a stop at 9:59. Mr. Wang, a tiny, wizened old man with a magic touch in the kitchen, smiled as he held out my bag in one hand and locked the door with the other. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and given my penchant for pressing time, it wouldn’t be his last.
Equipped with Rice’s noodles and my rangoon, I zoomed through quiet city streets for home, content that my brother would neither change the locks nor maim me.
My head was full of Senka. Forget enigmatic, clove-smoking Warren, forget time travel. I mean yeah, that shit was weird. But the guards' saw movement in the crevasse over the princess’s grave.
What would that mean for Senka Hollow? Rasha sacrificed her daughter to save us. If something had gone wrong… If we had awakened the princess…
Was anybody safe?
Lila refused for me to climb down into the tomb, insisting we ‘wait it out.’ I didn’t agree with her decision, but I also had no desire to go up against the leader of the hollow.
Because, again, I like my eyeballs.
I cut the engine and slid my bike into its usual street-side spot near the apartment. We rented a too-small loft in a four-story building, flanked on either side by a decaying skyscraper — two quakes from collapsing — and the Hollow’s only surviving library. This wasn’t the best area in the Core, but it wasn’t the worst, either; a fact I had to continually remind my mother. With each passing year, I found it less likely we’d be mugged, and more likely we’d wake up with the skyscraper crumpling through our windows.
At the door, I touched my Com to the sensor and shoved at the bar, a movement I’d done a hundred times or more since leaving the Res.
The door didn’t budge.
I staggered back a step and nearly dropped the food bag, dumbfounded that my fob had failed. I tried again.
Nothing happened.
Shifting the bags to my elbow, I called up my brother’s number on my Com. It rang eight times and went to voicemail.
Fuck.
I sighed. He was probably staring at the TV, his fingers getting a workout on some ancient video game. Not for the first time, I regretted ever splurging on electricity when half the Hollow did without.
I scrolled to my landlord’s number and tapped to connect.
“Yo.”
“I’m locked out,” I snapped. “The sensor is on the fritz.”
“God damn thing worked twenty minutes ago when I got home. What the fuck you do to it, Nez?”
I rolled my eyes. “Screw you, Antonio. Let me in.”
A moment later, the door buzzed to indicate manual override, and I shoved into a dim interior that smelled of curry and poverty.
Some days, I regretted leaving the Res. My mother’s cabin was impeccable and always smelled like the harvested herbs that hung drying from her ceiling: basil, oregano, rosemary, cilantro. Life on the Res was simple and self-sustaining. Sunshine and dirt instead of concrete and shadow. I don’t know what went wrong with me that I craved the Core and the life of a cop over the stable future of a tribe’s chieftess. And where I went, Rice went—we were a package deal. Not for the first time, I wondered why my brother had followed me and my selfish dreams into this hovel.
On the second floor, I passed 2-B and Mrs. Vincente’s overly loud television. Her husband had died last year, and I think she kept the damn thing on 24/7 because the noise filled the empty spaces.
The couple in 3-A were at it again, firing angry, rapid Spanish at each other, punctuated by thuds and bangs. As I stepped onto the second landing to leave their bullshit behind, I heard a door open behind me.
It never failed. The man had a nose like a bloodhound.
“Relle?” a quavering voice called. “I smell blood.”
“It’s probably not mine,” I said, turning to grin at Mr. Popovich.
He stepped into the hall, his nose upturned, and his sightless eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you. Come here.”
I sighed but did as he asked. Mr. Popovich was a great old guy, and he’d known my dad a long time ago. The tenuous connection he maintained between me and my dead father made it easier for me to relent to his weird quirks.
“You’re hurt.” He held a hand over my face, concern furrowing his brow. “Come. Let me clean you.”
“Mr. Popovich, I’m okay. I promise.”
“No, no. No arguing. You bleed, I fix.”
I followed him into his apartment, because if I didn’t, he’d call my mother. The last thing I needed on a night like tonight was to deal with her special brand of crazy.
“You work tonight?” Mr. Popovich asked, motioning to a chair at his kitchen table. The layout of his apartment was identical to ours, but the feeling wasn’t the same. There always seemed to be something missing in his place: a kind of emptiness that couldn’t be explained away by the sparse furnishings and lack of decorations.
“Yes, I did. Had an apprehension. She scratched my face.” I’d forgotten about the wounds until my bloodhound neighbor had smelled the dried blood. Nail wounds were nasty business, what with the overabundance of germs living beneath a human’s fingernails. I’d almost rather get shot.
The scratches burned beneath Mr. Popovich’s ministrations, but I knew it was necessary. For me, of course, because alcohol might keep my face from puffing up like a rooster. For Mr. Popovich, he could get his fill of fatherly duties and feel needed. Win-win.
“How is your daughter?” I asked him.
“Good. Pregnant.”
“That’s great,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. Bringing kids into Senka Hollow was dumb and irresponsible. Senka’s failing protection meant more opportunity for the weakest to fall victim to the darkness.
“No, it isn’t,” Mr. Popovich echoed my thoughts. “I told her it is not safe for a child here. Not now. She never listens.”
“We have that in common.”
“You are a good girl, Maurelle Nez. Hush now.”
He dabbed ointment on my cheek, his cloudy eyes fixed on a point somewhere over my shoulder. I didn’t know how old he was. Sixty? Seventy? But he’d been around the block a time or two, and if there was anybody I could trust to ask sensitive questions, it was him.
“Mr. Popovich. Have you ever heard of someone being able to time travel?”
He paused, his meaty finger dangling over my eyebrow. “Many, many long years ago. Why do you ask?”
“So it’s possible?”
“There are tales, yes. It isn’t a magick I’ve ever seen myself.”
“What would you say if I told you I met someone who could do it?”
Mr. Popovich put the lid back on his antibiotic ointment. He looked right at me, as if he could really see me. “If that is the case, Maurelle, then I would be concerned. Nature evolves to save itself only when everything else falls apart.”<
br />
My face burned like fuck as I stepped heavily off the stairs onto the fourth floor. The hall was blessedly silent, as it should be past ten at night. I hooked the small bag of rice and fortune cookies on the door handle at 4-A—my favorite neighbor, Elroy, a scrappy old dude who had left the Res before I was even born. He worked nights at the power plant on the outskirts. His food would be waiting for him when he got home, and I’d rest assured I wouldn’t get a lecture from my mother on his health.
I stuck my key in the lock of the apartment I shared with my brother and turned it, but the lock didn’t unlatch; the damn thing was unlocked. I gritted my teeth and shoved open the door.
“Rice!” I yelled irritably. “You left the damn door open again. I’ve told you, you can’t do that in this neighborhood. Even with the front door sensor.”
I shut the door and flipped the deadbolt. My brother didn’t answer. I could hear the tinny sound of his video games from his bedroom.
“Noodles!” I called, hoping to tempt him to move. I flipped the light on in the kitchen and started pulling boxes out of plastic. The delicious smells emanating from the containers made my stomach rumble.
I popped a fortune cookie from the cellophane and dropped it on the offering plate on our altar. The small ancestral temple was my one concession to our heritage, a habit that had traveled with me from the seat of my ancestors to this cramped, dingy downtown apartment. The ingrained habit seemed almost involuntary; a necessity similar to brushing my hair or showering. The importance had waned somewhere between then and now, lost along the road I’d taken.
“Rice! Vittles!” I yelled again as I opened the cabinet to extract plates.
I paused, the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. I’d been so caught up in getting home with our dinner, and then dealing with the faulty lock sensor and Mr. Popovich’s fatherly attentions, that I hadn’t paid attention to the energy in the apartment.
I set the plates on the counter and opened my senses. The agent in me never stayed alert at home. All my guards could drop when I walked through the door; all the tension I carried, the razor-sharp focus, it could all vanish. This was my safe-haven, the place I shared with my brother, who was the only surety in my life.
Something heavy hung in the air. Something wrong.
“Rice?” I barked. The first stab of worry sliced through me.
No response.
I walked the hallway to our bedrooms, feeling lightheaded. I trailed my fingers along the wall for balance, maybe for comfort, for proof that I was real and the world was real, even if Senka’s grave lay split to the air ten blocks away.
My brother’s door hung open. Electronic music and chaotic light spilled into the hallway, like it usually did when he binge-played.
“Rice. Dinner.” I put a palm on his door. The hinges creaked as it opened.
Lit by the maniacally flashing lights of a retro Donkey Kong game, my brother lay sprawled on his bedroom floor, eyes wide and mouth slack.
His throat gaped open like a hideous, bloody smile.
4
For a moment, I thought the roaring in my ears was the building collapsing around me. The Hollow had only just experienced an earthquake; aftershocks could rattle the walls, send the decaying skyscraper next door onto our heads before anyone could react.
But I realized the roaring was the sound of my life shifting. The sound of everything I knew bending and cracking at the sight of my twin dead on his bedroom floor.
I took three hesitant steps into the room. The flashing of his TV cast the scene in a surreal glow. Blood pooled around him like liquid ebony and streaked his arms and hands. I didn’t need to check his pulse to know he was dead—his gaping neck wound had already spilled his entire life’s blood and begun to congeal.
I clenched my fists and had to fight to steady my breathing. Step One: Don’t lose control. I eyed the scene, looking for anything out of place. If I searched the room, I didn’t have to look at Rice. Though that hardly mattered—the visual had scarred itself into my mind. I had a feeling I’d never not see his bloody body and his face slack in death. Not for the rest of my days.
Rice was a slob, but he went about it in a comically organized way. More clothes over his armchair than in his closet; bed a messy jumble of blankets and too many pillows; and his laptop sitting open on the desk.
Powered on. I crossed to his desk and called up the screen. His webcam portal filled the display as it always did—my brother lived for gaming.
I wasn’t familiar with the program; other than the Com—which ran mostly on fae magick—I wasn’t very good at keeping techie things alive. The Hollow’s dial up was notoriously shitty because the lines gave preference to Coms, so it was a waste of time in my opinion.
I found the replay button.
His webcam had been active when the intruder entered. Rice sat on the floor beside his bed, game controller in hand and the room dark but for the television. He sat in his little world, playing away. Then something changed; he straightened and looked at the open bedroom door.
A figure appeared, bathed eerily in the light of the TV. Broad shoulders and slim hips indicated a man, though the bulky black sweatshirt, loose jeans, and black ski mask made identifiers moot.
My brother didn’t even have time to stand. He dropped his controller and threw his hands up as the intruder leapt. The knife slashed at Rice’s hands, but he still fought, grappling with the guy valiantly.
Rice wasn’t a warrior like me. Not to say he wasn’t strong or couldn’t hold his own, but there’s more to being a warrior than just strength and capability. Timing. Precision. Planning in the heat of the moment. You can’t teach a warrior mentality; a person either has it or they don’t.
Rice allowed the wrong angle to open. I watched the knife nearly decapitate him.
The intruder didn’t stick around long. He rifled through Rice’s pockets and extracted a small black object. The picture quality was too grainy to see clearly; I had no idea what could have been in my brother’s pocket that would have been enough to murder him over.
Then the killer left, still clutching his blood-soaked knife.
I watched Rice twitch until he fell still.
My mouth was dry. My fingers were numb. Time for backup, especially since my knees couldn’t hold my weight and my vision had begun to dance around the edges.
I tapped the screen on my Com and waited for dispatch to connect.
When I first started running for the Reina, we hit it off like we’d been friends since the dawn of Senka Hollow. We hadn’t, of course. Lila was a good many years older than me. She ruled the Hollow long before I wore cloth diapers in the dust of the Res.
So my closest friend was Shana Clayton, a sassy, street-wise detective on the Sapiens Enforcement Agency — the human answer to the Senka Enforcement Bureau. Luck had abandoned me with Rice’s murder, but offered restitution in my best friend’s chocolate gaze.
“Oh, sugar.” Her ebony skin deepened in the light from the TV, reminding me how weird it was to be sitting in the dark with my brother’s dead body. She wrapped me in a tight embrace that smelled of cigarettes and the coconut pomade she used in her short black curls. “You okay?”
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut and took a couple deep breaths of her comforting scent and limitless energy.
I tried to not do it regularly. Shana was human. Being around her did something for me I didn’t fully understand, not in the same way we understand why the rain falls or the planet revolves. Breathing of her presence steadied me, filled my reserves. It was pure fae magic, this “feeding” from humans, and it was dangerous.
Over a century had passed since the world fell apart, and Rasha, our queen, saved us from ourselves. The Undoing annihilated human and fae populations across the planet. The merging of the fae realm and the human realm depleted natural resources, as fae magic began to take more than the earth could handle. When we realized we could draw energy from the humans, and they realized they could use
our magic to fuel their technology, things only got worse. It was a matter of time before we destroyed one another.
That’s when Senka came to us. Rasha buried her daughter deep beneath the core of the city, and her goodness perpetuated everything. We found our balance. We rebuilt our home.
But the psychological damage had been done.
I stepped away from Shana’s embrace, feeling like a bitch for the little energy I’d taken of her.
Having given me efficient sympathy as befitting a friend, Shana extracted a steno pad from the inner pocket of her elegantly-cut suit jacket and flipped to a blank page.
“You’re so old school,” I joked, because it felt normal. “That’s what your Com is for.”
Shana glanced at the slim, fae-designed watch on her wrist. “I only wear it because it’s policy.”
“It’s meant to make your job easier.”
“It’s meant to take the ‘human’ out of ‘interaction.’” She leveled her gaze on me pointedly.
I inclined my head. “You aren’t wrong.”
“Should we relocate?” Shana glanced at the crime scene techs beginning their work.
The question sent a chill through me. I looked at my brother on the floor. “I’m not ready to leave him.”
“Fair enough. Start from the top.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I came home. He was dead. His web cam recorded the murder.” I pointed to the laptop on his desk. Tiny, pixelated versions of us stared back from the screen.
“Convenient.” Shana made a note on her pad. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”
I pulled up the screen on my Com and opened the phone application. “Quarter after nine tonight.”
“Did he sound distressed or worried?”
“No. Just hungry.” My stomach twisted. If I hadn’t taken so long at Headquarters... if I hadn’t been held up by the jacked-up door sensor and Mr. Popovich’s infernal need to parent me, maybe I would have been here. Maybe I could have saved him.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 3