Chapter 3

“Craft.” A voice said, piercing the darkness. “Craft, can you hear me?”

A stinging pain flared along my cheek. I flinched, or tried to, but my eyes were already closed and something cold and hard was behind my head. No, not just my head. All of me.

Another sting—someone slapping my cheek.

I pried open my eyes, but couldn’t see anything beyond the contorting mix of colorful energy swirling in front of my face. To make matters worse, grave essence clawed at me from all sides, threatening to overwhelm me as the chill searched for a place under my skin.

Squeezing my eyes closed against the chaos, I focused on my shields. Whatever had just happened, it had blown through my outermost shield. Not good. Concentrating hard, I imagined my barrier growing to an impenetrable wall once again. As the gaps closed, the cold wind tearing around me died, the grave moving farther away. When I opened my eyes again, the room was eerily black, but then it had been before I . . . what? Fainted?

“What the hell just happened, Craft?” Jenson asked at the same time a woman asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not sure,” I said, answering both.

My brain felt thick, like my head had been stuffed with cotton. I struggled to a sitting position, releasing an embarrassing grunt with the effort, and the room spun around me. Pulling my knees to my chest, I groaned, and pressed a hand to my forehead. What had happened?

I groped blindly for the gurney so I could steady myself and stand, but then I froze, palm inches from where I guessed the parked gurney sat. The skin across my hand tingled painfully, like electricity was jumping from the metal.

“Hey, Jenson, what is the iron content of stainless steel?”

The detective’s answer came slow, like he wasn’t fully following why I asked. “Pretty high, but it’s an alloy.”

Which, by his tone, I took to mean it shouldn’t have the same effect on fae as pure cold iron. It was universally known that iron was the most effective weapon to use against the fae. What most humans didn’t know was why. I’d recently discovered that iron interrupted the magic between a fae and Faerie. Short-term result was usually sickness. But a long-term severing? Death.

I flexed my hand without closing it on the gurney. Pain shot along my skin, and I pulled back. The steel might be an alloy, but it was definitely affecting me.

The two women I’d heard in the hallway were in the room now. I didn’t recognize their voices, and I wasn’t about to push the topic of iron when I was trying my best to pass for human. Scooting farther away, I staggered to my feet, the effort leaving me dizzy and breathless.

“You gonna make it?” Jenson asked. He stepped closer until I could feel him hovering, but he didn’t offer me a hand.

I nodded, sucking down air like the oxygen content wasn’t quite enough to sustain life. What is happening to me? I didn’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d bet it had something to do with Faerie.

The two women were talking softly, too quiet for me to make out what was being said, but I could guess my untimely swoon was the topic. I hated being blind, and the added confusion of having passed out in the middle of the morgue didn’t help. Frustrated, I cracked my shields. My physical eyes were currently useless, but with my shields cracked, my psyche looked across the planes. It created a confusing jumble of realities splashed with colors and pitted with decay, but I could see enough to navigate.

It also made my eyes glow with an unearthly light. Strangely, no one gasped or stumbled back, which was the typical reaction to this particular trick. That was a refreshing surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. Then I remembered the necklace I wore. It was a fae-wrought chameleon charm, bound to me with blood magic. Unlike a witch-made perception charm that would allow me to control exactly what people saw—but would have to be targeted and would burn magic quick—this charm simply made people see what they expected to see. I needed it on a daily basis to prevent people from noticing that my skin shimmered—it was a fae thing and as I hadn’t figured out glamour yet, one I couldn’t control. It apparently also masked my glowing eyes. No one expected to see it, so they didn’t. Definitely an added benefit.

It took me several blinks to work out the mess of information my psyche had turned into a type of sight, but I was getting rather used to seeing across planes, so after only a moment, I scooped my purse from the floor and turned to Jenson.

“We were going somewhere?” Because I still needed him to sign paperwork, and I wasn’t letting him slip away until he did.

Jenson shot a glance from me to the two morgue techs who were both watching us. Then he nodded. “Let me put Mr. Watts away and we can grab a coffee.”

That sounded like a plan to me.

•   •   •

There was a café down the street from the precinct, so we walked. Which was a relief, as I didn’t feel like explaining why I couldn’t drive. I might be able to see well enough to walk around, but I definitely wasn’t trusting myself behind the wheel.

Once Jenson had signed my client agreement, and thus I’d covered my ass legally for any fallout from my ritual, I closed my shields and let the darkness surround me. I hated being blind in public—it made me feel vulnerable. But I was just sitting in a booth nursing a coffee, and Jenson seemed to be in no hurry himself. If I needed, I could always open my psyche again, but giving my eyes some time to heal would be best.

So, we sat in silence. Me with both hands wrapped around the hot coffee as I tried to encourage some of its warmth into my body, and Jenson on the other side of the booth, most likely still staring into his mug, which was pretty much all he’d done since we arrived. It was almost companionable. Almost.

“Will you turn over the case?” I asked once the waitress refilled my mug for the second time.

“I should. No good explanation outside of magic for a horde of serpents showing up like that and then vanishing just as mysteriously. The hammer, especially, is damning, isn’t it?”

Admittedly, glamour had been my first thought. But that didn’t explain what had happened to the boy’s shade. Both Emma and Jeremy had been killed by the snakes, but only his shade had been damaged. He’d also been the first attacked. That seemed significant.

“How about that drug, Glitter. Have the police run across many cases with it before? I’ve never heard of it.”

The table thrummed as Jenson drummed his fingers over it, but he didn’t answer immediately. I wished I could see his expression, or if he’d nodded or shook his head, because it didn’t seem like I was going to get a verbal answer. Then he grunted and said, “I can talk to narcotics, but new street names for the same old designer drugs pop up on occasion, so it might be nothing. But you’d think the blood panel would have caught that.”

I could almost hear his frown. And I had to agree with his initial assessment that something was off about this case. I set down my coffee mug. Damn, I was brooding over the circumstances of the case. This wasn’t my case. While I couldn’t deny that the strange circumstances piqued my interest, my part was over. I’d raised and questioned the shades. That was all I’d been hired to do.

“Well, I should—” I cut off as a commotion broke out in the front of the café. Loud exclamations of what sounded more like amazement than fear rose from several voices all at once, followed by scooting chairs and pounding feet as people rushed toward the windows.

I cursed my eyes as I twisted in my seat, but I didn’t stand.

“What’s happening?” I asked, straining to hear what people were saying. There were too many voices and I was catching only snatches that didn’t make much sense.

“Not sure.” Jenson’s chair screeched as it scooted back, so I guessed he stood, but with all the other noise, I couldn’t tell if he went to check it out or not.

Cursing under my breath, I cracked my shields and opened my psyche. The café snapped into distorted focus and I looked around. Jenson had, in fact, moved to the front of the café where all the patrons were gathered at the large windows. I stood slowly, still trembling from the combo of overused magic and grave chill, and then I made my way toward the crowd.

I stopped before I reached the window, gawking.

Jenson turned toward me. “You seeing a unicorn? Because I am.”

I nodded, dumbfounded. Outside the window. In the middle of main street, a man in dirty clothes that had seen better days sat on the back of a large white horse with a spiraled horn sticking out of the middle of its head. But while I could clearly see the unicorn, I could also see through it.

“It does look like one.” Superficially, at least.

“Then it can’t be a unicorn because you sure as hell aren’t a virgin.”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t peel my gaze off the spectacle in the street. Jenson had made more than one disparaging comment about my sex life in the past. This time though, it was applicable.

“Yeah, and you aren’t exactly a maiden,” I shot back, and received an amused grunt in response. For that matter, the guy riding the mythical beast was far from a virginal maiden either, and if folklore was to be believed, only young ladies pure of body and heart should be able to see a unicorn, let alone touch or ride one.

Jenson stepped back from the crowd and dropped his voice. “You think it’s real or glamour?” The last word was a whisper.

As I could see through the mythical beast, I was fairly certain it was glamour. But why? And who had created it? The man riding on its back was clearly human, his soul, while a little dim was the yellow I associated with humans. He might have been a witch—that didn’t change the color of the soul—but he certainly wasn’t fae. So he couldn’t have created the unicorn. Then what is he doing on its back?

Jenson was staring at me. I’d never answered his question. With a forced smile, I gave him a noncommittal shrug. After all, the unicorn wasn’t doing any harm. Just making a spectacle in the street. Now if it turned carnivorous and started eating the man, that would be a problem, but as it was, what was the harm?

As I watched the unlikely pair trot out of view and vanish around a corner, I wished I could truly believe that it really was just an innocent spectacle, but in my experience, nothing good ever came from glamour.

•   •   •

By the time I left work, the unicorn was already an Internet sensation and speculation about the man riding it was running rampant. Dozens of cell phone videos had captured the beast trotting down the street, but the pair had vanished before reporters arrived on the scene, so most of the footage was shaky or shot from a far angle. I’d followed some of the coverage, but nothing provided any clue as to where the glamoured beast had come from, or why, so I’d eventually gone back to the less than thrilling task of cataloguing the not-so-magic coins I’d been hired to analyze.

Rianna had made me promise I wouldn’t sleep at the office again, so after putting it off as long as possible, I finally packed up the coins, gathered my dog, and headed to the house I shared with two housemates and one uninvited house-crasher.

The lights in my one-room efficiency over the garage were all blaring bright and cheery behind the blinds when I arrived home. Falin was in. I stared at the lights as I parked. Then, picking up PC, I bypassed the steps on the side of the house that led to my private entrance and headed toward the door to the main house. Back when I’d first moved in, Caleb had given me a key to the main house in case of emergency. I dug in my purse for that key now. It had been getting quite a workout in the last few weeks.

As I searched for the key, the sound of a movie playing drifted through the door, and I hesitated. Both Caleb’s and Holly’s cars were in the drive, which meant they were likely watching something together. A few weeks ago, I might have plopped down on the couch beside them and asked someone to pass the popcorn. But a lot had changed recently. For one, Holly and Caleb were likely not just watching a movie, but cuddling while doing so—and hopefully nothing more than cuddling. You’d think they were a pair of love-struck teenagers the way they were suddenly all about each other. Dreamily gazing into someone else’s eyes while wearing a smile you just can’t contain might feel great during new love, but it was damn awkward for the third wheel living with the couple.

Also, there would be no popcorn.

A few months ago Holly had been forced to eat Faerie food, which for whatever reason, is addictive to mortals. And not the kind of addictive that any number of anonymous group meetings in a basement was likely to fix. Once a mortal ate Faerie food, they could sustain life on nothing else. Human food turned to ash on the tongue. There was no cure. It was Faerie food or starve, and Faerie food couldn’t be removed from Faerie without disgusting—and inedible—results.

So, no popcorn or any other form of movie snacks. Also, with the floor plan of the house, I couldn’t even subtly nuke a TV dinner without her being very aware of it from the couch. She rarely complained directly about anyone eating in front of her, but I knew her dietary restrictions pained her. Add to that the fact that it was sort of my fault she was in this mess as the deranged changeling who’d given her Faerie food in the first place had kidnapped Holly to use as bait for me . . . and yeah, I didn’t eat mortal fare in front of her.

I glanced down at PC in my arms. “Which awkward is more uncomfortable?” I asked him in a whisper.

The little dog cocked one white tufted ear and wagged his tail. Which wasn’t an answer. Not that the dog would have cared even if he had been capable of answering. As long as he had food and a bed, he was an easygoing kind of guy. I, on the other hand, would rather not have to choose between the weird tension between Falin and me, or the awkward intrusion into Caleb and Holly’s budding romance and the guilt I’d feel if I made even as little as a cold sandwich with Holly around.

With a sigh, I set PC in the grass so he could do his business. Once he was finished, I turned away from the main door and headed toward the stairs to my loft, hoping it was the right choice.

When I opened the door, Falin was in the kitchenette loading steaks and cheesy mashed potatoes onto two plates. He didn’t look up as I entered, or when I set my purse down on the one chair in the room. He didn’t even say hello. He just grabbed silverware before depositing one of the plates on the far side of the counter, not quite in front of me, and then taking his own plate and leaning against the stove.

“Hi to you too,” I said, frowning at the plate of food. “How did you know I’d be home for dinner?” Because the steaks had just come off the pan he’d seared them on, and looked perfectly cooked, not like he’d been waiting. Which was odd, because I certainly hadn’t told him when I’d be home. Last night I hadn’t come home at all and the previous two nights I’d come upstairs only to grab a change of clothes, so he couldn’t have been expecting me.

Falin didn’t look away from the food on his plate. “I always make enough for two.”

Right. Maybe barging in on Holly and Caleb would have been the less awkward choice. Too late now. Grabbing the plate, I retreated to my bed. It wasn’t much of a retreat, if you discounted the bathroom, the loft was only one room. But at least, with Falin in the far side of the kitchenette and me on the other side of the room, it was slightly less weird that we were in the same room ignoring each other, right? Okay, maybe not.

Sighing, I dug into the food. It tasted as good as it smelled. Which didn’t surprise me. Falin was an excellent cook. I felt contrary enough to try to be annoyed by that, but it’s damn hard to be grouchy while eating an amazing steak.

But even focusing on an exquisite meal couldn’t overcome the level of awkward resounding in the small space. Setting my plate on my pillow, I leaned over and pressed the power button on the TV remote. The shabby old television flickered to life. Lusa Duncan, the star reporter for Nekros City’s most acclaimed witchy news station, Witch Watch, appeared on the screen. Behind her the image of a man, whom I originally thought was quite old but then realized had most likely simply been worn hard by life, was superimposed on the screen.

“—would not confirm cause of death,” Lusa said as I bumped the volume. “But it is believed that Murphy was the same man seen only hours earlier riding on the back of a unicorn in downtown Nekros.”

A second image, this one a pixilated close-up of the bedraggled man from earlier today appeared beside the first image. I squinted at the two images. My vision wasn’t quite back to what passed as a hundred percent for me, so I was far from certain, but the two men did bear a striking resemblance to each other.

“Did you hear about this?” I asked, looking toward Falin.

He glanced at the screen, but he didn’t answer as his focus returned to his plate.

Did that mean yes? No? Or was he just avoiding speaking to me. I frowned at him and turned back to the TV. Lusa went on to mention that the body had been found in an alley earlier in the evening, and that while the police weren’t releasing any information, witnesses said the man who’d found him had tried to resuscitate Mr. Murphy, who had no obvious wounds, but to no avail.

By the time she moved on to the next story, my fork lay on my plate, the forgotten food cooling. I hadn’t confirmed to Jenson that the unicorn was pure glamour at the café because I didn’t like admitting I could see through glamour. Now I wished I had. The rider—if it really was him—ending up dead a few hours later was too much of a coincidence.

I slid off the bed, but as I stood, dark spots filled the corners of my eyes. I swayed, dizzy for a moment. I pressed my hand to my forehead, ready to sink back down—I had no interest in hitting the ground for the second time today. The sensation passed as quickly as it hit. Did I catch Rianna’s cold? I shook my head. I didn’t have any cold-like symptoms, so most likely it was just the exhaustion of too many days of poor sleep mixed with the massive amount of magic I’d used today.

Dropping the rest of the uneaten steak into PC’s bowl, I trudged over to the sink with my plate. That put me directly beside Falin, a proximity that made my shoulders tighten, my whole back going rigid. I tried not to let the tension show as I all but dropped my plate into the sink, but it didn’t matter. Falin’s gaze remained locked on his own plate, and I retreated back around the counter. Too fast.

The dizziness struck again, and I clutched at the counter as darkness filled my vision.

When the black dots cleared, Falin was staring at me. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said, jerking my hand back from the counter as if that was the damning evidence of the dizzy spell. “I think I caught something.”

Falin set down his plate and crossed the small kitchen area, but he stopped, still two feet short of actually reaching me. “Fae do not ‘catch’ illness.”

I shrugged. “Well, my heritage is rather questionable.”

Lines of concern cut deep around his mouth, drawing down the edges of his eyes. The expression looked genuine, but how could I be sure? At the Fall Equinox he’d made a point of proving he couldn’t be trusted—a very cutting point, as in with the edge of his blades. That happened right after he tricked me, then said he loved me, and then warned me to never trust him. His display of emotion now could be some ruse conjured by the Winter Queen in which he had no choice but to play out his given part. I couldn’t believe anything where he was concerned.

But, oh, I wanted to.

It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t be trusted. It might have made me a fool, but I really did believe that he cared for me. Of course, him caring didn’t make him any less dangerous. That was one reason this sucky situation was so awkward.

“Alexis . . .” He reached out, stepping forward to close the gap between us.

I retreated, dodging around the one chair in the loft, a stool, so it blocked his path. Not my bravest move, but necessary. “What do you know about the unicorn from today?” I asked, as much to redirect his attention as a general wish to know.

He stopped, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to let it drop. Then he seemed to draw back into himself and the concern on his face vanished as if it had never been there, his features going remote, icy.

“The one on Main Street? We received reports about it, but by the time agents arrived, it was nowhere to be found.”

That didn’t surprise me. If the media hadn’t made it in time, there had been little chance the FIB would.

“It was glamour.”

If my words surprised Falin, he didn’t let it show. He also didn’t ask how I knew. He was aware I could see through glamour.

After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “I assumed as much. There hasn’t been a verified unicorn sighting since the Renaissance.”

Now it was my turn to look surprised. So they really do exist. Or at least, they had at one time. Maybe they would again. Stranger things had happened. The point was, this one hadn’t been real.

“The man riding the glamour was human. The news thinks he’s dead.”

Falin frowned again. Glamour meant Fae involvement, and we both knew it.

“I heard,” he said, nodding toward the television.

“Are you looking into it?”

He gave me a blank look, his features giving away nothing. He was the head agent of the local FIB—surely they were looking into it, right? His focus moved to the dishes in the sink. There was nothing companionable about the silence. It was a force that filled the small room, choking out the possibility of more conversation.

How long had I been home? Surely Holly and Caleb are finished with their movie by now.

“I’ll just grab a change of clothes and get out of your way,” I mumbled as I headed toward my dresser.

There was a clink as Falin set a still-soapy plate on the sink and turned around. “Alex, you realize I’m ordered to live with you. If you aren’t living here, I have to go wherever you are.”

I froze, a camisole slipping from my fingers. “You mean . . .” If I kept sleeping in Caleb’s guest room or made a habit of staying at the office, the queen’s order would force him to follow? Caleb was already furious about Falin staying in the loft. He’d probably evict me if Falin moved into his guest room. I closed the dresser drawer much harder than needed. I hated this, but there was no human authority I could turn to, and the highest Faerie authority was the queen—at least in Nekros—and she was the one who’d given the order in the first place.

My nightclothes clutched in my hands, I turned away from the dresser. “Are you actually ordered to sleep in my bed?”

“I haven’t been, have I?” He pointed to a neatly folded pile of bed linens in the far corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed them before. Two pillows sat on top of the bedding.

“Right. Well, then, my room is part of the greater house, so if you are simply ordered to live with me, that should meet the requirement,” I said, and glanced at him for affirmation. When he frowned but didn’t disagree, I nodded. “Good. I’ll be downstairs. Come on, PC.” And with that, I left the awkward ambiance of my loft.