Chapter 20

“The queen seemed . . . different,” I said as Falin rummaged through the first-aid kit in his glove box.

He grunted, the sound noncommittal, before pressing a large gauze pad enchanted with a healing spell against the vicious-looking gash across his ribs. I winced. The first-aid kit seemed painfully inadequate for how hurt he appeared to be, and while I could attest to the fact he healed faster than normal, it still seemed as if he should be getting medical help. But I couldn’t make him see a healer or doctor, so I didn’t bother arguing.

“She mentioned she’d been turned on by her own court. Betrayed. I’m assuming she didn’t mean the alchemist. Blayne?” I asked, guessing.

Now it was Falin’s turn to wince, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the wound he was cleaning.

“Dead,” he finally said, shutting the first-aid kit.

I was not expecting that response. “A duel? He challenged the queen for her throne?”

Falin sighed. “He did not intend to. But the queen is, as you said, not herself. By the time she’d twisted everything, he had little choice but to challenge her.”

“And he lost.” I wondered if he’d been the one to deliver the worst of Falin’s wounds. “I don’t suppose he was the alchemist by any chance?”

“No.” Falin closed the glove box and slid stiffly into the driver’s seat. “He did not die in the dueling ring, but after his defeat was treated to the queen’s hospitality in Rath. He knew nothing of the alchemist.”

I shivered. Rath was the name of the queen’s dungeons. I doubted Blayne had a pleasant death. Or afterlife. Whatever she’d done to him, if his body was still in Faerie, his soul was trapped.

Falin stared straight ahead as he drove, his lips pressed into a tight line and the muscle over his jaw bulging.

“You liked him?” And he’d had to duel him, and whether he struck the final blow or not, he likely now wore the stain of Blayne’s blood on his hands.

Falin nodded. “I respected him. But I think when the queen considers her actions later, she will regret them. He’d been with her a long time.” He paused. “He was also Ryese’s father.”

Well, that explained why Ryese hadn’t been his normal, leering self during my visit. The queen had tortured her own brother-in-law to death? Of course, as marriages expired among fae, maybe he wasn’t her in-law anymore, but still. That was harsh. And very scary.

If Ryese and his father were both on the queen’s council, was his mother as well? “Is Maeve the queen’s sister?”

“No. Maeve was the consort of the last Winter King.”

I twisted in the seat and stared at him. “You mean Maeve was queen until the current Winter Queen challenged and killed the king?”

Falin shook his head. “She was never powerful enough to be queen. She was the king’s wife at the time of his fall, and from the whispers I’ve heard, she’d been close to losing that position to our queen as well, even if the throne hadn’t been usurped.”

So the Winter Queen had challenged and killed her own lover? Somehow that didn’t shock me. “And the queen keeps Maeve on her council? Why? Hell, for that matter, why did Maeve stay in the winter court?”

He gave a tight half shrug. “I believe the queen is of the mind to keep her potential enemies where she can keep an eye on them.”

And here I thought she simply eliminated potential threats.

“Besides,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot in front of a nondescript gray building, “all of that happened hundreds of years ago. Most of the nobles have messy, intertwined pasts.”

Not a surprising complication with being near-immortals. Live long enough and I suppose you’d have a lot of complicated history. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that because we’d arrived at our destination: FIB headquarters.

The building squatted on the very edge of the Magic Quarter, nearly backing up to the river that separated the main part of the city from the more witchy and fae districts. The building had a sign, but it was a small one, easily missed if you weren’t looking for it. Clearly it wasn’t a place the public was welcome to stop by and file reports or check up on a case.

Falin parked behind the building and turned off the engine. Then he sat there, frowning at his steering wheel. I paused, my hand on the door.

“If you say you don’t want me to come in, I might strangle you,” I warned him.

His gaze tore away from the steering wheel slowly, the frown not moving as his eyes refocused.

Crap. Judging by his expression, that had been exactly what he’d been thinking.

“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have everything at stake here. I don’t care what secrets the FIB might have in there—in fact I promise to try to forget anything not relevant for this case—but I need all the intel I can get right now, and I need it sooner rather than later.”

For a long moment he just stared at me. I swear, he didn’t even blink. His gaze moved over my face, no doubt taking in the bruiselike circles I’d noticed under my eyes or the fact the mirror had reflected back a face slightly paler and gaunter than I’d worn a few days earlier. His frown tightened, and then he nodded, pocketed his keys, and climbed out of the car.

I’d been expecting an argument, been sure I’d get a lecture on fae secrets—or hell, the FIB were technically classified as a government agency, so admonishment that we were dealing with state secrets and classified information not meant for a civilian wouldn’t have been unwarranted. The lack of argument was actually more frightening. It highlighted exactly how little time I might have left.

Please let us find something. I needed a break in this case. A map with a big red X on it was unlikely, but hopefully the FIB database would have something.

Falin used a glyph to unlock the back door of the building and led me through a bland gray hallway. A couple of doors lined the hall, most closed, but the few open ones were rather disappointing. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the FIB offices, but they were run by fae, so something more interesting than a shoebox-sized break room complete with a crappy folding table and a mostly empty vending machine. Falin stopped in front of an office with his name on the placard by the door. Again, no key, just a few glyphs by the lock and the door popped open.

His office was as dull as what I’d seen of the rest of the building. It had depressing gray walls, a pressboard desk with a computer, and a window covered by dusty blinds. Wow, the Tongues for the Dead offices are actually nicer. Of course, that was because of one decorating-savvy brownie who’d had access to a vault of gold I hadn’t known existed until she’d spent all of it, but still. This was the court’s official representation in Nekros, and it was depressingly boring. After the terrible beauty of Faerie, I’d expected more.

I started to say something, but Falin crossed directly to his computer, his face still grave. Yeah, probably not the time to discuss decor. I watched over his shoulder as he pulled up an official-looking program and logged in.

He glanced back, and for a moment I thought he was going to comment on my hovering, but after a brief pause he said, “About twelve years ago the winter court began keeping an electronic database of all the fae in our court and all the independents in our territories. Before that, censuses were conducted when the doorways changed and recorded only on paper.”

“And how many times have the doors changed since the electronic database was created?”

Falin’s shoulders sagged. “We are still in the same territories.”

My lips formed a silent O as Falin keyed JENNY GREENTEETH into the program. I knew that the doorways to Faerie moved, and that they may stay put only a single season or might take decades to move again, but I hadn’t realized the Winter Queen had counted Nekros as part of her territory for quite so long. I doubted many mortals knew who ruled the area where they resided—it didn’t affect their lives much. Fae were another story.

“I’m guessing the fae in other courts’ territories aren’t in your database? Is there some sort of shared database?” The look on his face was a clear no. Humans might believe the FIB was a large unified agency, but each court governed their own territories with totalitarian control. And apparently they didn’t share information.

Falin hit ENTER and a pixilated SEARCHING popped up on the screen. This wasn’t exactly cutting-edge technology, but considering most fae were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, it probably seemed pretty new and advanced to them. Falin was fairly young for a fae—how young, I didn’t know, just that he’d been born after the Magical Awakening, so no more than seventy mortal years. He was also more technologically savvy than many of his contemporaries and he thrummed his fingers against the desk in a staccato of impatience as he waited for the sluggish program to search for our query.

Finally the computer beeped. I scowled at the NO RESULTS message flashing in the center of a pop-up box. Falin tried TOMMY RAWHEAD next, with the same results.

Falin collapsed backward in his chair, a loud sigh escaping between his lips. I felt equally defeated.

“Now what?”

He pushed out of the chair. “Now we know these two aren’t members of the court or independents in the winter territories, which means they must have sworn themselves to a court member.”

“They couldn’t have refrained from showing up on census day?”

Falin shook his head. “Each time the doors change or an independent relocates to a new territory, he or she has to present himself to the new court or his tie to Faerie erodes and . . .” He made a vague gesture in my direction.

Yeah, I knew exactly what happened to a fae without a tie to Faerie. The two bogeymen hadn’t looked like they were fading. “So if they’ve sworn themselves to another fae . . . ?”

“They’ll be hard to find.” Falin stood, heading for the door. “Fae are supposed to inform the court if they take on sworn fae or changelings. The master provides the tie to Faerie, and while it breaks our laws to hide a sworn fae, being unreported doesn’t affect their tie to Faerie through their master. Fear of the queen’s wrath if discovered is usually enough of a deterrent—”

“But the alchemist has already proven himself to be a less than law-abiding courtier, so it is not terribly surprising that he didn’t declare his sworn fae.” I sighed and shot a longing glance at Falin’s abandoned chair. I was so tired. “If they aren’t registered, how do we find out more about them?”

Falin motioned me to follow him, and I trudged behind him into the hall. “We can check the records and see if we can find out if they were in a territory we once held. That might give us more information on how the alchemist met them.” He paused in front of a door. Drawing a few glyphs on the door caused it to pop open, revealing a huge storage room filled with rows of book shelves, most crammed to the point of bursting with old, leather-bound books. The few shelves not filled with books were stuffed with stacks of ancient-looking scrolls.

“The censuses?” I guessed.

He nodded.

I stared at the rows of shelves. “Both used to be members of the shadow court. When they left, wouldn’t it be most likely they would become independents under shadow?”

“You can’t assume that being bogeymen makes them shadow.”

“It’s not an assumption. I had a reputable source. But I don’t know when they left or where they went.”

He turned to study me, but he didn’t ask about my source. He knew my great-granduncle was the king. I wasn’t about to reveal that I was theoretically betrothed to the prince.

“The shadow and light courts have no direct doors to the mortal realm—only the seasons do, so only the seasons have independent fae.”

Well, crap. That made sense. Shadow and light touched all of mortal reality indirectly, gaining belief magic through shadows, secrets, and nightmares for one court, and daydreams and creativity for the other. Light and shadow balanced each other the same way the seasons all balanced one another, but no direct doors meant no distinct territory, so no independents.

Where would the bogeymen have gone when they left the shadow court? Had they pledged to a season? Had they been granted the right to declare independent? Or had they immediately sworn themselves to the alchemist?

I glanced over the rows of books. It would take forever to go through even just the most recent ones.

“There is one more thing,” Falin said, crossing the room to a small nook I hadn’t noticed. A dark wood cabinet stood in the nook, and Falin had to use twice as much magic to open it as it had taken to enter the building. I peered around his shoulder as he opened the cabinet, but all it contained was yet another book—granted, a massive one—on a pedestal.

“Another census?”

“No,” Falin said, hefting the book out of its nook. “This is a collection of lore. Actually, all lore. If enough mortals to shape belief magic have ever believed in something fae related, it is in this book.”

I eyed the book. While it was the thickest book I’d ever seen, it didn’t look big enough to back up that claim. And anyway, how would one collect every bit of folklore that mortals believed? Well, there was one way.

“Magical artifact?” I asked, and Falin nodded. “Okay, I’ll take the folklore,” I said as Falin placed the book on a small desk tucked away in the corner. “You take the census.”

Falin looked less than thrilled at the idea, but he didn’t object. Then we both settled down for some research.

A spell in the book’s binding brushed my mind the moment I touched the cover. I jerked back at the mental touch. The artifact automatically recorded folklore, I knew that, but what else did it do? I mentally poked at the book with my ability to sense magic, but this was fae magic, not witch, and I was still only beginning to sense that. I let my hand hover over the binding again. While the brush of the spell was a very other sensation, it felt similar to the enchantments worked into my dagger. After hesitating a moment more, I flipped open the book.

The pages immediately began to turn, flipping rapidly as if caught in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Then they stopped. The book going still. Without touching the book again, I glanced at the page. Two words jumped out at me: Jenny Greenteeth.

I grinned. The book was apparently enchanted to help the reader find what they were looking for. Finally, something helpful. I scanned over the page and the grin slipped away. The book was written in Old English.

This was going to take a while.

•   •   •

Several hours passed. My back ached from poring over the book, but I pressed on. I had to read most of the passages aloud. While my eyes couldn’t make much sense of the Old English spellings, when I read aloud and heard myself pronounce the words, I could decipher at least seventy percent of the text. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.

I’d read a dozen tales about Jenny Greenteeth and had found three aliases she’d been known by over time or that had been associated with her. Tommy Rawhead had only one other alias that I’d found: “Rawhead and Bloodybones.” Yeah, he sounded like a pleasant guy. I’d passed the aliases on to Falin, in case they were listed under those names in the census, but so far he hadn’t come up with anything.

I wasn’t sure I was doing much better. I was jotting notes in my phone, but most of the stories illustrated what we already knew: they were both bogeymen who ate naughty children.

I leaned back, trying to stretch the kink out of my back. Somewhere down the hall a door slammed open hard enough to bounce off the wall, the loud boom followed by the sound of running feet. A shrill voice called out, “Is anyone here? We need all hands, pronto.”

Then the owner of the feet and voice passed in front of the records room door and ground to an abrupt halt. “Sir, I—I didn’t know you were here,” the agent said, her voice thin as she gasped for breath.

She was glamoured to look human, and with my shields up I couldn’t see what she looked like beneath that glamour, but she didn’t quite pull off human. She was too small, too thin, and her features too wide on an angular face.

“What is it, agent?” Falin asked, looking down at the smaller fae.

“We just got a call. There’s a fire.”

“What does that have to do with the FIB?”

She swallowed, her full lips pressing into a thin line as she gulped. “Well, um, early reports say the fire isn’t natural and, um, something about daemons dancing in the flames.”