Chapter 3

AS SOON AS I emerged into the Earthly realm, my cell phone began chirping and vibrating with the messages that had accumulated while I was on the other side of the hedge.

The sigils I’d used took me into a doorway that was situated in the vestibule of a Vegas gym called MonsterFit. The windows on all sides of the space had been treated with Fae magic to keep the people on the inside and the outside of the gym from seeing Fae pass through. It was one of the trickier doorways to use because if anyone was in the vestibule the netherwhere would hold you in the void until it was clear. But the lot outside had free parking, and that was a hard thing to come by this close to the Strip. At this hour, the gym was closed, so I didn’t have to worry about cross traffic.

I scanned through the windows as the chill of the netherwhere seeped away, and I headed toward the parking lot where I’d left my scooter, a vintage GTS Vespa I’d named Vincenzo. I had a few texts from my Fae roommate and best friend for years, Lochlyn, about bills and groceries and her plans for later that evening. I’d also missed call from my father and a voicemail from an unfamiliar number. When I listened to the voice message, I nearly deleted it after a couple of seconds because it was obviously a recording. Then I realized it was a call from the Stone Order.

I let out a groan and started the message from the beginning.

“Hello, this is your official summons to an emergency meeting of the Stone Order scheduled for tomorrow at ten in the morning San Francisco time at the stone fortress. All New Gargoyles sworn to the Order are required to attend. Again, there is an emergency meeting . . .” The recorded voice repeated the date and time.

In spite of the considerable independence my life in the Earthly realm afforded me, I was still a subject of Marisol and the Stone Order. With extremely rare exceptions, all Fae had to be sworn to a Fae leader. It was another of those Faerie things there was no way around. To renounce all fealty would mean that I’d lose my Fae magic and the ability to ever pass into Faerie again. I wanted distance—as much of it as I could get away with—but not to renounce Faerie forever.

I shoved my phone back into the pouch sewn to my scabbard, pulled the faded hand towel off the seat of my scooter, and stuffed it into one of the saddlebags. It was dark out, but when I’d parked, the evening Vegas sun was still blazing, and out of habit I’d covered the seat.

I was just about to hop on when there was a petulant yowl behind me. I turned to see a skinny striped tabby sitting on the sidewalk and looking up at me with big yellow eyes.

“Hey, Lemony, I thought you’d left me,” I said, digging in another pouch on my scabbard strap for a piece of jerky. I bent to give the treat to the stray who often lurked near this doorway. He took the offering, and I gave his head a pat before straightening.

For reasons unknown to me, I’d been a stray magnet since childhood. Usually cats, but occasionally dogs. Even a rabbit and a turtle once. I used to try to shoo them away, but years ago I gave in and began carrying treats with me. My roommate Lochlyn said it was good luck to show kindness to stray animals. I wasn’t so sure about that, but the animals seemed to appreciate the handouts.

I looked up the Millennium’s location on my phone and then hopped on my scooter and headed around to the other end of the Strip, taking roads that would keep me out of the thickest traffic. Van Zant’s hotel was in an area of second-tier luxury hotels.

At the Millennium, I left Vincenzo in one of the motorcycle spots, went inside, and headed toward the nearest restroom. In the privacy of a stall, I drew transformation magic to change my clothes. My jeans shrank into a micro-mini denim skirt, my boots turned to shiny leather with stiletto heels, and my long-sleeved navy henley transformed into a crop-top that fell off one shoulder and displayed a gold silkscreened couture logo on the front. I tied my hair up into a messy bun. Using slightly different illusion magic, I added the appearance of heavy black eyeliner around my eyes, mascara on my lashes, and glossy pink lipstick to my lips.

All Fae have magic called glamour, but it’s different than vamp glamour. Ours was primarily for changing the way we looked to non-Fae. Usually we use it to mask features that didn’t look entirely human, so we blend in better when in the Earthly realm. I could pass for human without any glamour, but I liked to use it to disguise myself at times.

After pumping up the spell that obscured my scabbard and sword from human eyes—more Faerie glamour-type magic—I emerged. Letting my hips swing as I walked slowly on the plush carpet in the spike heels, I headed toward the elevator that went up to the residences. There was a female concierge at a podium and a beefy man in black guarding the elevator. The man wore sunglasses and an earpiece. He was Fae, but she was full human with no magical ability, which should make this easy.

I gave the concierge—Brittany, by her nametag—a sultry smile.

“Hello,” I said. “Van Zant invited me up tonight. I should be on his list.”

She gave me a tight stretch of her lips that said she doubted it. “Your name?”

“Penelope,” I said, using the pseudonym I adopted when I had to use the sort of getup I was wearing at the moment.

I glanced down at the tablet on the podium as Brittany began tapping the device’s screen, and when she paused, I pushed a tendril of illusion magic to make it look as if my name appeared there.

“Well, Penelope,” she said. “Mr. Van Zant must have forgotten to tell you that he left town an hour ago.”

She quickly lifted the tablet, and it flashed in my face as she snapped my picture.

“But rest assured that I’ll tell him you were here,” she continued. “And now I’ve got your picture, so you’ll be in our system. Have a lovely evening.”

She cast a look at the guard, and he casually strolled a few steps closer to the podium.

I ground my teeth. Dammit. I’d missed my mark, and it looked like my usual illusions wouldn’t get me past the desk.

I forced a disappointed pout. “Oh, silly me, I must have gotten our times mixed up. Thanks anyway!”

I turned and speed-walked away, not wanting a run-in with the guard.

As I passed through the exterior door, I dropped my cosmetic illusions and transformed my clothes back as they were. The transformation happened in a fraction of a second, banking on the chance that anyone who might have seen the change wasn’t sober enough to question it.

I headed back to the MonsterFit doorway, taking my scooter inside with me. Instead of using the doorway to pass into Faerie, I whispered different words and traced a sigil in the air with my index finger. Then I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and held it, bracing myself in anticipation of the frigid blast that came with using a doorway.

All Fae were born with the magic that allowed us to use doorways and helped us blend in with humans in the Earthly realm, as well as specialized magic that was based on the race or races of the individual. Our magic literally runs through our blood. To call on it, we only need to turn within and focus on the sensation of our own hearts beating and the magic-infused blood coursing through us.

The darkness and freezing cold of the netherwhere engulfed me, and I lost all sense of up or down. Seconds ticked by, and I held my breath until the chill began to thaw. Allowing myself to breathe again, I cracked open my eyelids.

I was standing in a corner of a condemned parking garage on the edge of Boise, Idaho, the city where I lived with my roommate, Lochlyn.

Faerie doorways had limited capabilities to transport us between various locations in the Earthly realm. Any doorway could theoretically connect to any other doorway in Faerie, if you knew the right sigils to trace. But in the Earthly realm, the connections were scarcer. For instance, there was only one doorway in the San Francisco area, where the Stone Order’s fortress was located, that could take me here to Boise.

I straddled my scooter, started it up, and zipped toward home, located on a slightly raised plateau known as The Bench, which was situated behind the train depot that was still in operation.

It was after two in the morning, and weariness pulled at me. I parked Vincenzo in his assigned spot and went up to the second-floor apartment. The place was dark and silent, and the door to Lochlyn’s bedroom stood open, indicating she was still out for the night. Part of me was disappointed she wasn’t there. It had been a few days since we’d been able to catch up with each other. But the other part was too tired for a late-night chat.

In my sparse bedroom, furnished with only a frameless twin mattress and a second-hand dresser I’d bought for nine bucks, I propped my scabbard against the wall next to the bed, shed my jacket and boots, and then collapsed across the mattress. As my eyelids drooped, I tried to muster the will to take a quick shower but fell asleep before I could force myself up.

When I awoke, morning light slanted through the cheap blinds. I sat up and could feel by the stillness that Lochlyn was still gone. I reached for my phone, thinking to text her to see if she’d be home in time to grab coffee together. But then suddenly remembering the summons to the Stone Order, I scrambled to power on my phone and check the time.

I had exactly an hour to get there, and the drive from the Bay Area doorway to the stone fortress would take at least half that.

“Shit!”

I sprang off the bed, shed my clothes in a heap, and scooted to the bathroom for the fastest shower in history. Oliver, my father, would kill me if I showed up at the Order wearing yesterday’s sweat-wrinkled clothes.

Back in my room, I put on the least-torn pair of jeans I owned, my worn boots, and a faded but clean tank top with a light jacket. Throwing my scabbard on over my head and adjusting it to settle in its usual place over my shoulder and across my chest, I was out the door.

Dammit. I was probably going to be late. Oh well. It was only by pure luck that I didn’t sleep through the whole thing. I always slept more deeply after using my stone armor, and I’d done that twice the previous day. It would be a small miracle if I made it to the fortress close to the start at all, considering the time change between here and San Francisco, where the fortress was located. Not that Oliver or Marisol would see it that way.

I zipped down the road that skirted the train depot and weaved around cars to get to the downtown parking garage that hid the Faerie doorway I had to use to get to San Francisco.

The netherwhere swept away all sense of my mortal form. I emerged with a shiver in Crosson Hall, an abandoned naval base located on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay Area. Walking Vincenzo through the graffiti-covered corridors and weeds that had encroached into the structure, I exited the base, shoved my sunglasses onto my face, hopped on my bike, and took off down the road. The scooter’s engine echoed loudly off the walls as I gunned it.

I got on I-80 to 580 toward San Rafael. Lucky for me, it was the tail end of the morning commute traffic, and vehicles were moving along. I took advantage of California’s road rules that allowed motorcycles to pass between lanes, and got into the rhythm of weaving between cars on the freeway.

It was a beautiful sunny Bay Area morning, and a relief from the summer scorch of Vegas and the lesser but still toasty heat of Boise. I inhaled the salt-tinged air, enjoying the rush of the wind past my skin. My chest and face still pulsed with a vague ache in the places where my stone armor had been the night before.

Remembering how my mark had eluded me, my mood soured. I’d taken that assignment, which had an unusually high payout, because I really needed the cash. Recent repairs on Vincenzo had eaten next month’s rent money. My irritation turned toward the Stone Order. If it weren’t for this damned meeting, I could be hunting down Van Zant right now. I wouldn’t receive another Guild assignment until this one was resolved.

The Stone Order’s fortress was located in the facility that was formerly the San Quentin prison. It was a formidable concrete structure located on a point overlooking the water. Much of the exterior had been left as it was to mask the fact that it led into Faerie. The non-Fae of the Earthly realm knew of Fae and Faerie, but generally Fae preferred to keep our secrets to the extent possible. Many humans looked upon Fae with suspicion, mostly due to the lore about us stealing human babies away into Faerie. It was a silly story—we Fae had no use for magicless human children who technically couldn’t swear fealty to any Fae ruler.

Marisol had converted much of the old prison into living quarters for the hundreds of New Gargs who lived there and official headquarters for the Order. One of the residents was my father, Oliver.

The interior of the facility had also been transmuted through the hedge to Faerie, so technically it was no longer part of the Earthly realm. Once you stepped through the doors to the fortress, you entered Faerie. It was a strange concept if it was something you were not accustomed to. I admit, it still twisted my mind up a little if I thought about it too hard. Mostly, it meant that the fortress was impenetrable to non-Fae folk unless they were granted passage. Even a very nosy and curious non-Fae would simply find it was a completely inaccessible building. From the outside, the windows appeared to have been sealed over with concrete, and the doors barred.

When I arrived, the place of course looked deserted. I rode around the corner. There was no one else in sight, probably because they’d all been on time. I walked the scooter up to what appeared to be an alcove. I pressed lightly on a lopsided star that looked almost like a random scratch in the concrete and whispered magic words. The wall shimmered like water, and I stepped through the arch and into the interior of the New Garg fortress in Faerie.

Leaving my scooter parked near the entrance—and knowing it would piss off Marisol to no end that I was using the Order’s grand marble entry as my own personal parking lot—I hurried toward the auditorium.