Chapter 8

“What is all that?” Rianna asked, as Holly dropped a stack of books and journals on the table.

Holly’s lips twisted as her nose scrunched in distaste. “Research for a case.”

Rianna eyed the stack as she lifted a bowl to her lips and sipped what looked like barley soup. Holly’s “fifteen minutes” had turned into an hour. I’d told Rianna to head on without us, and I was glad I had. The sun had been dipping below the horizon line as Holly and I walked into Nekros’s one and only fae bar, the Eternal Bloom.

I always insisted on sitting in the back of the bar, and Rianna had secured our normal table. As I moved to take the chair against the wall, Desmond looked up from where he’d been lapping up his own bowl of soup on the floor. He gave a huff that sounded a lot like a laugh and regarded me with red eyes that betrayed his amusement that even after a month of nearly daily visits, I still chose the chair that let me watch the room.

“Hey, if you want to make fun of me, stand up straight and say it,” I told the barghest.

The amusement in his doglike features bled into hostility, and he curled a lip, exposing yellow canines. Once I might have shied back, but he didn’t make a sound, which meant he didn’t want Rianna to know. As such, it wasn’t likely he’d attack me. I shook my head at the barghest. He had a humanoid form. I knew that for a fact as I’d seen it when I’d gotten caught in the Realm of Nightmares. But whenever I saw him with Rianna—and I never saw Rianna without Desmond—he was in the form of an oversized black dog. A few weeks ago I’d started to ask why he always remained in one form, but the shaggy black dog had knocked me on my ass. I hadn’t tried to ask again—though that didn’t stop me from picking at him when he picked at me.

I scanned the room from my seat in the corner, fully aware that the barghest’s amusement wasn’t exactly inappropriate. At this point, I surveyed the room more out of habit than paranoia. The Bloom would never be my favorite place, or somewhere I felt particularly safe, but familiarity breeds acceptance. While my first couple of visits ranked right up there on my panic scale with running blindfolded through a minefield, I’d now rate our time in the Bloom more in the range of walking through a bad neighborhood at night. Caution was smart, but there was no reason to be terrified. I knew what to avoid: the fiddler playing the endless dance, the enormous tree growing through the floorboards that hid the door to the winter court—which wasn’t actually a hazard unless you were avoiding the Winter Queen, which I was—and the tree’s amaranthine blooms that gave the bar its name and had an enthralling effect if studied too closely.

As for the rest? Well, I barely noticed the seemingly random movement of the sun or moon above the branches of the enormous tree, and even the trolls, dryads, goblins, fauns, and all the other unglamoured fae of every size and color were becoming familiar. I hadn’t spoken to many, but most were local independents who frequented the bar regularly so as I glanced around the room I recognized many of the fae. Occasionally I’d spot a changeling or a fae still wrapped in glamour, but in truth, Rianna, Holly, and I were the odd ones in this crowd.

And the other patrons treated us as such.

It had taken me a couple of weeks to realize, but the resonance of the bar changed slightly whenever strangers or court fae entered the room. And if a Fae Investigation Bureau agent arrived? The change wasn’t just slight. Of course, while humans thought the FIB were a nationalized organization in charge of policing and maintaining order in the fae population, in truth each branch worked for whatever court ruled that area. That made the local division of the FIB the Winter Queen’s enforcers. And I knew firsthand that the independents in Nekros had every reason to distrust her.

My quick scan of the room showed that aside from the slight disturbance from Holly’s and my entrance, the atmosphere of the bar was relaxed and jovial. Good. I turned back to the table as Holly pulled papers out of the satchel she carried. She didn’t look any more pleased by them than she had the stack of books.

“I thought you enjoyed prepping for cases,” I said. She certainly used to attack the task with gusto.

She collapsed into her chair and slumped forward. “Yeah, I do. When it’s my case. I’m sitting second chair, again, and to a junior prosecutor.” She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, her fingers sliding into her straight red hair and making it fall forward around her face. “I have to get on the DA’s good side again.”

I didn’t know what to say. Holly might not look intimidating with her heart-shaped face and pixie features, but she could dominate a courtroom and move a jury. She was in her element in trial and her talent hadn’t gone unnoticed. Her career had been on the fast track. For the past year the DA had been batting her good, career-making cases. He’d even made her second chair to him in the Holliday trial, and whatever the higher court’s ruling, that case was going down in history, and Holly’s name was attached to it.

Then she’d gotten tied up with Faerie, and the last month had been disastrous for her career. It wasn’t just the food either.

It was the damn doors.

The first time I’d visited the VIP section of the Bloom, I hadn’t realized the significance of signing the ledger—on both sides of the door—and signing out again. That was a mistake. One I paid for by losing three days in the mortal realm while only an hour or two passed in the Bloom.

Now we meticulously signed the ledgers every visit, but the doors were still unpredictable. Usually we’d emerge only moments after entering, regardless of how much time we spent inside. Sometimes the amount of time that passed in the Bloom corresponded relatively equally to the time in the mortal realm—knowing precisely how close they lined up was impossible as watches weren’t feasible when time rarely lined up properly. Gaining extra hours was great, and equal time was fair, but on a couple of occasions, time in the mortal realm had accelerated and passed much faster than that in the Bloom.

That was the real reason we’d missed dinner with Tamara last week. We walked in the Bloom at six, spent roughly forty-five minutes inside, and walked out to find it midnight. At least it was the same day. That wasn’t the first time either. A week earlier Holly had missed a morning court date—which was why she was on the DA’s shit list. It was also why she skipped breakfast now when she had morning trial.

I thought at first that we’d done something wrong, but no, the damn door was just finicky and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The fact we weren’t allowed to talk about the Bloom hiding the door to Faerie didn’t help, as that meant Holly was left scrambling for excuses. I wished I could offer her some solution, or even a suggestion, but I had nothing. Hell, I was barely dealing with my own issues with Faerie.

A light click-clack of approaching hooves sounded as a faun carried a tray laden with food to our table. He first placed a platter in the center of the table. The aroma of roasted lamb, spices, and rosemary wafted up from it, making my mouth water. The faun then set down steamed asparagus stalks, followed by a stack of sticky buns. When he started passing out plates, it took all my willpower to lift one gloved hand and wave mine away. Rianna claimed it with a quick “for Desmond” and a gesture to the barghest. The server only shrugged, like he didn’t care one way or the other. He set down several tall, waxed leather flagons and placed a pitcher on the table. Then, without a single word, he turned and clip-clopped away.

“So what’s tonight’s lie?” Holly asked, dropping her hands to look at the small feast laid out across the table. Whereas I had to resist sneaking a bite, Holly picked up a thick slice of lamb and dangled it between two fingers at arm’s length as if the oh-so-tender-looking meat were a sweaty sock or dead rat.

I sighed. After we’d lost half the morning two weeks ago—and Holly had lost the respect of her boss—she’d decided, illegal or not, she’d sneak Faerie food out of the Bloom. Not a lot, of course, just enough so that she’d have some options, be able to snack in the middle of the night, and maybe eat lunch at work once in while. Sneaking out food was an idea we’d discussed on multiple occasions, but Caleb had vehemently vetoed even the suggestion.

But Caleb wasn’t there the night Holly had gotten the equivalent of a demotion. She was devastated and desperate, so I’d helped her smuggle out the food.

The thing no one ever told either of us about Faerie food? The reason that, more than being illegal, it was taboo to take it into the mortal realm? That’s because Faerie food is real only inside Faerie.

The second we stepped foot into the mortal realm the roasted chicken and the half dozen sweet rolls turned into toadstools. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they almost instantly browned and shriveled into squishy, foul smelling fungus.

After that Holly had sworn off Faerie food. Completely. She’d claimed she would rather starve to death than eat glamoured toadstools. And she gave it a damn good try. She made it four days on nothing but water before Caleb finally convinced her that she had to eat. Now she did so with reluctance, as if she saw those toadstools regardless what delicious-looking dish the server set in front of her.

Holly glanced at me. “Will you at least look at it?”

And by “look” she meant See, as in through glamour. I pressed a gloved finger against my lips. The fact I could see through—and even break—almost any glamour wasn’t a well-known fact. Folklore was full of stories about the fae putting out the eyes of those who could pierce glamour. I assumed it was less of an issue now that I was fae, but I didn’t like taking chances.

Not that I wasn’t going to look. I’d just appreciate a little more discretion. I cracked my shield of vines, simultaneously raising the new opaque bubble I’d been forging. As best as Caleb was able to explain it, the Bloom was a pocket of Faerie, but not truly a part of Faerie. It was more of a bleed-over zone for the doors between the two realms. That said, it was still more Faerie than not, but small amounts of planes that existed only on the mortal realm bled into the pocket, like a thin layer of the land of the dead and a few wisps from the Aetheric plane—neither of which existed in Faerie proper. So when I looked at the room on a psyche level only the smallest patina of gray filled my vision, and the fae constructed tables and chairs remained whole, undamaged.

But as interesting as I always found that, it wasn’t the reason I was peering at the world through my psyche. I wasn’t sure if it was my planeweaving ability or the natural growth of my sensitivity to magic as the fae in me emerged, but when I opened my mind I could see magic and spells as well as see through glamour to the truth underneath. What I couldn’t see through was glamour that reality had accepted as real and so became not just believable, but true.

I had no doubt that the food had started as glamour, but Faerie had fully embraced it, and the feast spread across the table was real—even if it hadn’t always been.

“It’s exactly what it looks like,” I said, snapping my shields closed.

Holly nodded but stared at her plate another moment before taking a deep breath and picking up one of the sticky buns. She nibbled on the edge, as if testing to make sure it really was what it appeared to be.

I’d been so busy trying to convince Holly to eat that I hadn’t noticed the drop of noise in the room as the patrons leaned close, keeping their heads down and murmuring instead of joking boisterously with goblets and flagons raised. That is, I didn’t notice until Desmond pawed my leg, a quiet but menacing growl escaping his throat.

Then I noticed. Big time. The ambiance of the room hadn’t turned frightened, which meant it wasn’t a FIB agent causing the change, but it was definitely cautious.

Not that I had trouble spotting the man who’d caused the disturbance. His hair shimmered like crystal in the ethereal glow that emanated from somewhere under his pale skin as he strolled through the bar. He moved with the air of someone who thought all those he passed were beneath him, or perhaps, were there for his amusement. While the patrons didn’t meet his eyes, many looked up after he passed and stared at the Sleagh Maith, who was enchantingly beautiful without his glamour. But he knew exactly how good he looked, which in my opinion, made him far less attractive. As did the fact I knew who he was.

Ryese. The Winter Queen’s nephew.

I ducked my head, hoping he wouldn’t spot me, but it was too late. He walked straight toward our table.

“Good morrow to you, Lexi,” he said, using the obnoxious nickname the Winter Queen had given me after deciding, in her words, that Alex was too dreadfully masculine.

“It’s evening, Reeses.” Yeah, okay, intentionally mispronouncing his name just because he used a nickname I hated was childish. Sue me.

Ryese glanced up at the canopy of branches where the roof of the bar should have been. Enough light filtered through the glossy leaves to show that despite the fact dusk had fallen in the mortal realm as we entered the bar, in the Bloom the sun was in the eastern part of the sky. I didn’t bother explaining myself.

“May I join you?” Ryese asked, moving Holly’s stack of research.

“No,” I said at the same time both Holly and Rianna said, “Yes.”

Ryese smiled, taking the seat opposite me. “Quite a feast they’ve laid out for you. And yet, once again, you are not eating.”

It wasn’t a question, and I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t hungry, so I simply ignored him. I was much more concerned with the fact that both Holly and Rianna were staring at Ryese like he was the last source of oxygen in the world and they needed to be near him to live.

Crap, they’re bespelled.

The sad part? I doubted he’d done it intentionally. As a race, the Sleagh Maith were a lot like the ever-blooming amaranthine flowers: so pretty you couldn’t help looking at them, but the more you looked, the more caught up you became. I clearly hadn’t inherited that particular trait, but Ryese possessed it in spades.

At my side, Desmond nudged Rianna’s knee. When she didn’t react, he nudged her stomach, first gently, but when that didn’t work, hard enough to knock the air out of her. She blinked, gasping for breath, and then looked around, as if she’d forgotten where she was. Desmond gave a soft whine and she blinked again.

She swore under her breath. I caught only bits of it, but what I could make out was very unflattering toward Sleagh Maith in general and Ryese in particular. I didn’t take it personally. Rianna lowered her gaze, locking it on the food in front of her and as far from the glimmering fae as possible. She curled her fingers in the hair on Desmond’s nape as if the barghest could keep her grounded. Then she very pointedly ignored Ryese.

Not that he noticed. This wasn’t the first time he’d crashed my dinner, and more than once he’d made it clear he regarded changelings as little more than ornamental furniture.

Was it obvious I didn’t like the guy? The fact he’d carelessly bespelled two of my best friends didn’t improve my opinion of him.

Unfortunately, Holly didn’t have a fae guardian to bring her around. I called her name, once, twice, a third time. She didn’t notice. Of course, she was closer to Ryese. Him sitting across from me put him directly beside Holly.

I shot a glare at the fae. “Can’t you tone down the…” I waved my hand.

“You just gestured to all of me, dearest.”

I gritted my teeth at the term of endearment because I wasn’t his “dearest.” Hell, I wasn’t his anything. Nor did I have the least bit of interest in becoming such. I was ninety percent sure he was here because the Winter Queen sent him. She was determined to add me to her court by any means necessary, and I wouldn’t put it past her to send her nephew to seduce me. Hell, she’d offered him to me once before. The fact I’d passed was why I reserved the other ten percent when it came to his motives. Ryese didn’t take rejection well. When I’d turned him down, it was just possible I became a conquest to be won for his pride’s sake.

Whatever his motive, he was doomed to fail. He was as trustworthy as a viper, and had an ego larger than could fit at our table. Besides, he sucked at the whole seduction thing. I just wished he’d figure that out and stop showing up uninvited.

“Glamour yourself, would you?” I said, having to force the words through my still gritted teeth.

“Afraid you can’t resist me much longer?”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Trust me. That’s never going to be a problem. But you are disturbing our meal.”

Ryese’s pretty face darkened with rage. His eyes, which were so pale I’d have thought he lacked irises if not for a thin ring of blue on the outer edges, narrowed, and he turned, looking at the bespelled and besotted Holly at his side. When he reached out to stroke her cheek, she moved into his hand, sighing with pleasure at his attention.

“Do. Not. Touch. Her.”

Ryese didn’t drop his hand, but he did turn toward me. “Dear heart, she’s not the one I want to be touching.”

I think he meant for the words to be suggestive, but the darkness I’d seen flash across his face when I’d laughed at him was still evident in his voice, so it sounded like the touch he wanted involved strangling me.

“You’re in my seat,” a deep voice said behind Ryese, and the fae whirled around.

Caleb put his hands on the back of the chair and stared at the fairer fae. Caleb wore the familiar glamour he favored. One that made him look like your average boy next door with sandy-colored hair and a friendly face. Well, typically friendly—right now his expression was as hard as the marble blocks he spent most of his time carving into decorative but powerful wards.

“I was invited,” Ryese said, his tone haughty petulance. “And besides, I was here first, green man.” He made the last sound like a slur, pointing out how much farther down the food chain Caleb was than the conceited son of a bitch.

“Actually, you weren’t invited. I told you that you couldn’t sit there,” I said. “And Caleb has a standing reservation at my table, so that is, in fact, his chair.”

Ryese frowned at me.

I’d been receiving a crash course in all things fae recently. Rules, laws, customs—whatever Rianna and Caleb could cram in my head. I was trying to learn and retain it. After all, knowing how to play the game was the only way I was likely to keep my freedom. Maybe the only way I’d survive. From what I understood, all Sleagh Maith were considered royals in the courts. From there each court had their own way of determining the standing of the courtiers, which mostly just made my head hurt when Rianna had explained it. One thing all courts agreed on though, was that the independent fae were at the very bottom, their rank not much higher than changelings—who were property—so that said something about how low court fae considered the independents.

My rank in Faerie’s hierarchy was unclear. I was neither independent nor court fae. There was no precedent for a completely unaligned fae. In fact, the words “impossible” had come up more than once. Of course, I didn’t quite fit in any of the fae boxes. In all appearance, I was born human but either became fae or the fae in me woke under the Blood Moon—I still wasn’t clear on that detail. Since then, other fae sensed me as Sleagh Maith, and yet, how much of me was fae and how much human no one knew. The fact I hadn’t been born tied to a court or grandfathered into the independent’s vows further muddled the situation. It also lent credence to those who considered me more human than fae.

So where did that put me in Faerie’s hierarchy? Caleb and Rianna had been debating that for weeks. It was pretty clear Ryese outranked me, so he could sit anywhere the hell he wanted. But he had asked, and I’d said no. Rianna and Holly had said yes, but even if I were only feykin—a mortal with fae blood—I still outranked a changeling and a human.

I could almost see Ryese weighing these facts in his mind. After whatever conclusion he came to, he rose, slow and casual-like, as if it were his own idea.

“Until next time, dearest Lexi,” he said, reaching for my hand, most likely to kiss my knuckles, but he faltered when his fingers touched the stiff material of my gloves.

He’d seen them before; it wasn’t like I’d been hiding my hands. There were only three reasons fae wore gloves: fashion—which for the winter court appeared to be stuck in the Tudor period, but my gloves were clearly not a part of my ensemble; the second reason was for fae in the mortal realm, as gloves protected their hands from iron, but we were in Faerie, not the mortal realm, which left the final reason a fae wore gloves and that was because Faerie took the phrase “his blood is on your hands” very seriously. I’d killed another fae, and I’d had a damn good reason to do it, but now I wore his blood.

Ryese’s palms were spotless.

As he’d already taken my hand, he didn’t change midgesture, but gave me a stiff bow, not touching more than my gloved fingers with his hand. Then he straightened, and without another word or a glance at Caleb, he turned and strolled back toward the giant tree and the door to the winter court.

Once the fae had vanished behind the trunk of the tree I turned to Caleb. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see you in my life.”

The stony glare he gave me as he sank into the chair told me he didn’t agree. Not at all. Then all his attention turned to Holly. She had a vague, unfocused look on her face now that Ryese was gone.

Caleb reached out and squeezed her shoulder, shaking her gently. “Holly, can you hear me?” She blinked, but her eyes didn’t focus. Caleb rounded on me. “How could you let this happen?”

“I…What?” I stared at him. Not knowing what to say. It wasn’t like I’d called Ryese over and said, “Hey, why don’t you mesmerize my friend?” I realized my jaw had dropped, my mouth slightly open, and I snapped it closed, my teeth hitting with enough force to resonate up my jawbone. I crossed my arms over my chest and met Caleb’s accusatory glare. “What was I supposed to do? Ryese just showed up.”

“You’re supposed to protect her while she’s here.” Caleb’s glamour was slipping, making the angry slit of his mouth cut farther across than humanly possible, and blackness bled into his eyes as a greenish tint showed through his tan.

I gulped. I’d seen Caleb this pissed before, but never had his anger been aimed at me. Some primal part of my brain told me I needed to back away, to get away from the monster transforming in front of me.

Beside me, the legs of Rianna’s chair screeched as she pushed away from the table. “I’m going to…” She pointed to the door to Faerie. “See you at the office tomorrow,” she called over her shoulder as she and Desmond all but ran from the table.

I didn’t blame her.

Unfortunately, regardless of what that primitive fight or flight part of my brain told me, running wasn’t an option. I swallowed again and focused on making my voice flat, emotionless—or at the very least, not riddled with fear. I didn’t quite succeed as I said, “What should I have done, Caleb? Jump across the table and stab him? Or maybe you think I should have let him take me to the winter court so he wouldn’t be a threat to Holly?”

“You—”

But whatever he was going to say was cut short when Holly mumbled something, the words so quiet I couldn’t hear them. Apparently Caleb couldn’t either.

“What was that?” he asked, his voice gentle as he squeezed her shoulder.

She still wasn’t focusing on anything.

“He’s so pretty,” she said, her tone distant and wistful. Then she turned toward me, but didn’t exactly focus on me. “He wants you, Alex. It would make him happy. You should definitely go for it.”

The last sentence sounded like the Holly I knew and used to barhop with. The middle bit? Not so much.

I moved to the seat Rianna had vacated so that I’d be directly across from her. “Hey, Hol, you in there? Snap out of it.”

Caleb frowned at me again, but Holly blinked. Then blinked again. Her eyes narrowed. “Wasn’t someone else here?” She blinked rapidly and then gulped hard enough I could see her throat working. “Al, I feel kind of strange.”

“Need a bucket strange or need a drink strange?” Oddly enough, that wasn’t the first time in our friendship I’d asked that question.

“Drink. Definitely a drink.” She shook her head as if the movement would help clear it. Then she seemed to notice Caleb for the first time, and the fact he still gripped her shoulder, worry written over his not-quite-human face. Holly’s head tilted to the side, her expression still not sharp, but closer to clear. “What are you doing here?” she asked Caleb. “And what’s with the freaky half glamour?”

He stared at her for several seconds before releasing her shoulder and sinking into his chair. Then he pulled the entire platter of the remaining lamb in front of him and grabbed a thick hunk of the meat.

“I’m here,” he said between bites and his now fully black eyes cut over in my direction, “because a particular FIB agent mandated an inspection of my workshop ‘due to reports of possible suspicious behavior.’”

I cringed. Another raid?

“This has to stop, do you understand me, Alex?”

Again he was making me responsible for someone else’s actions.

“Exactly what do you want me to do, Caleb?” I asked, my voice low. Falin might be conducting the raids, but we both knew it was the Winter Queen ordering them and they weren’t likely to stop unless I joined her court.

Caleb shoved the platter away. “I don’t know. Figure something out. I’d hate to be forced to evict you, but this is intolerable.”

Something in my chest clenched, stealing my air, preventing me from speaking.

Holly gaped at Caleb. “You can’t mean that?”

He didn’t answer her.

“Caleb?” I said, squeezing the word out. My voice was thin. If he kicked me out…I’d lived in Caleb’s house for over seven years. I’d say he and Holly were like family, except I didn’t like my family. I cared about my friends a lot. I didn’t have any idea where I’d go if he made me leave. And I’d just put all my money into renting the office for Tongues for the Dead. I didn’t even have the money for a deposit if I had to go on an emergency apartment hunt.

Caleb frowned at me for what felt like forever; then he dropped his head and rubbed a hand over his face. The green faded from his skin, his glamour solidifying. “Just go, Al.”

Go? My throat closed. He really was kicking me out?

He looked up and whatever he saw in my face made his expression soften. “Home, Al. Go home.”

Oh.

“And attend the revelry in a few days. You need to see more of Faerie so you can choose your damn alignment and stop this madness.”

I had no idea what to say. So I nodded and then did as he asked and left.