Chapter 7

THERE WAS A huge payout for apprehending Van Zant, and I sorely needed it. My roommate had to cover my part of the current month’s rent, we had a handful of bills that were overdue, I hadn’t paid off all of Vincenzo’s last round of repairs, and my account balance had dwindled to double-digits. Not to mention the fact that Van Zant was a menace to society and his black market VAMP3 blood would cause deaths of innocents, if it hadn’t already.

When I stepped through the doorway and back into the Earthly realm outside the fortress, my phone buzzed and bleeped. I scanned through my messages to make sure there was nothing urgent—there wasn’t. But there was the picture of Nicole that Oliver had shown me on his phone. He must have stepped outside of Faerie to send it to me while I’d been in the training yard.

I gazed at it for a long moment, looking for any other resemblance between me and my twin besides our eyes. Our skin tone was similar, except mine was a tanner version. She looked like she wore sunscreen a lot, or maybe just didn’t spend much time outside. Her makeup was heavy, almost like stage makeup and much more than a girl with her sunny good looks needed.

I tucked my phone away, started up Vincenzo, and drove back toward the city and the doorway in the abandoned naval base on Treasure Island that I’d used to come from Boise to San Francisco. The ache from using my rock armor was more pronounced than it had been when I made the drive in to the Stone Order’s fortress, and my entire front torso was tender. I was drained from having conjured armor three times in less than twenty-four hours, and I’d need to do something about it soon. I wanted to find Van Zant before I had to travel to the Duergar palace on the sister-rescue mission and really hoped that errand wouldn’t require more armor.

On the drive, my mind buzzed around Nicole. Her name and the headshot were all I really had, and her face hovered in my thoughts. My hair was a medium neutral walnut and my face defined by my jawline and cheekbones, whereas she was honey-haired with a softer, heart-shaped face. Nicole had the face of a prom queen, and I looked like I played lead guitar for an all-girl ska band. We didn’t even look related. I wasn’t sure if I felt surprised, disappointed, or relieved about it.

I couldn’t see her build in the photo, but imagined from her slim, graceful neck that she was more petite than I was. They said that changelings often had a sense of separateness, of never quite feeling like they fit into their human world. Nicole looked happy in the picture, but that was just a brief second in time. Perhaps she’d had moments when she’d felt that inexplicable aloneness or glimpsed a vision of a different world in a dream. I wondered what kind of life she’d had, growing up with a human family. Nicole was old for a changeling coming home to Faerie—usually it happened in the teenage years or sometimes younger—and I suspected it was going to make it that much harder for her.

I couldn’t imagine living twenty-seven years without knowing I was a New Gargoyle. I made every effort to steer clear of Marisol and Faerie politics, but still. I was Fae, and I’d always known it. The thought of getting thrust into some strange alternate world was so foreign to me it was hard to wrap my head around it. I’d been raised in Faerie, but from a young age I’d spent some time here and there on the other side of the hedge. Oliver had thought it important that I understood the Earthly realm and its people. I always suspected he felt that way because of what happened to my mother, maybe thinking that if she’d been less naïve about vampires and other workings of the Earthly realm she might not have died. He’d taken me on many excursions to sightsee around the San Francisco Bay Area. Later, he’d allowed me to go through the hedge with friends, on occasion. When I decided to move out of Faerie altogether, perhaps he’d felt that encouraging my familiarity with the Earthly realm had backfired. He’d never voiced that regret specifically, but he’d made it clear he would prefer to have me permanently in the fortress.

I wheeled my ride into the doorway in the naval base, and a moment later the obliterating cold of the netherwhere swept away all thought.

I emerged in the MonsterFit vestibule in Las Vegas and quickly pushed Vincenzo out into the searing midday heat. I briefly wondered if the gym owners ever wondered about the faint tire tracks I sometimes left on the linoleum. Leaving my scooter in one of the free parking spots associated with the strip mall, I turned back to the doorway.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. Lemony, the yellow-eyed stray, came over and nuzzled my shin with the top of his head. He must be lonely to turn on the affection like this. He was usually more aloof.

“Lemon-cat, what are you doing out in this heat?” I asked, reaching for a treat. I squatted to offer it and then scratched him between the ears. “Must have missed me, huh?”

When I straightened, Lemony scampered away, probably seeking shade.

I went back into the vestibule, where I used the doorway to hop to the Strip, emerging next to Druid Circle, the club where King Sebastian had been attacked.

I walked the short distance to the nightclub’s entrance. The door to the club was cracked open and unguarded, which gave me a tiny zing of disappointment. I would’ve enjoyed harassing that jerky Elf bouncer.

Inside, I breathed a grateful sigh for the darkness and AC. The place was nearly empty. I went up to the bar and asked the bartender—not the Sylph girl, but a petite, busty redheaded Fae of too many races to be distinguished—to summon the owner, Gregory.

“Tell him it’s the New Garg who kept King Sebastian from getting knifed on the balcony last night,” I said to her.

When Gregory appeared in the doorway next to the bar, his dark eyes were guarded.

“Seen Van Zant around?” I asked, skipping the pleasantries. “The tip about the Millennium didn’t pan out.”

“Hold on a second,” he said, glancing around even though there was barely anybody in the place, let alone within earshot. He tipped his head toward the doorway where he’d emerged and then led me about ten feet into the hallway.

“He hasn’t come back here,” Gregory said in a low voice. “But I heard he’s in Faerie.”

I frowned. A vamp couldn’t just wander around in Faerie at will. Non-Fae required escorts, someone from this side of the hedge to act as a sort of guide and sponsor. Non-Fae couldn’t even physically pass through doorways without an escort.

“Who’s he with?”

Gregory shrugged. “Someone with Unseelie ties.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And?”

His gaze slanted down at an angle, and his mouth tightened into a line.

“C’mon, Gregory. He’s passing VAMP3 blood in your club. That’s a huge liability to you. One of his customers might go rogue. Can you imagine what a massacre it would be when it’s shoulder-to-shoulder in here and everyone’s drunk off their asses? It’d be a bloodbath.”

His shoulders sagged, and he passed a hand over his weary eyes. “I don’t know if it’s true, but some are saying there’s a Spriggan-Duergar woman with him.”

My frown deepened. Huh, a mixed Seelie-Unseelie was escorting Van Zant around Faerie.

“First, you said it was someone with Unseelie ties, so if it’s a Spriggan-Duergar woman that means she could be sworn to the Duergar kingdom,” I said.

He lifted a palm. “Maybe.”

He was right to be uncertain. Just because Van Zant’s escort was part Duergar by birth didn’t mean she was sworn to the Duergar kingdom. Gregory called her Spriggan-Duergar likely because those were the bloodlines that were obvious from her appearance. But it didn’t mean those were her only Fae bloodlines. She might have additional Unseelie blood in her lineage that allowed her to align with some other Unseelie kingdom. Every kingdom has its own rules about who can swear fealty. With the Stone Order, you had to be able to demonstrate rock armor as a sign that you had sufficient New Garg blood. Some kingdoms were fairly lax in their requirements because they cared more about numbers that purity of blood, but with very few exceptions you had to offer at least something supporting your blood ties. Without knowing the woman’s name or any other details about her, it would be hard to ask around to find out more.

I stepped out of Druid Circle, but instead of going back to MonsterFit, I intended to use the doorway in the alcove to hop to another location in Faerie. It was a neutral area, not part of the realm of any kingdom, that was simply known as the Carnival. It was a place known for shady business and illegal trade, and I thought I might be able to glean something more about the VAMP3 blood trade.

The oblivion of the netherwhere folded me into its welcome coolness. But a second later, I realized something wasn’t right. The empty void didn’t feel as empty as it usually did.

I automatically tried to reach for Mort, but there was no hand to move, no sword to grasp. Physical form didn’t exist in the netherwhere the way it did in the world. Yet, something began winding around me, curling like tentacles. My mind strained to fight, but it was like being tied up while paralyzed in the black vacuum of space.

Something had followed me into the void, and it was holding me there. Too long, and I’d never return to the world. My mind thrashed again, trying to command phantom limbs to battle my attacker, but nothing happened.

I was drowning . . . suffocating . . . dissolving into the void.

No.

I wasn’t going to die this way.

My thoughts raced, trying to conjure in my mind the sigils for a doorway—any doorway. It was the only thing I could think to try. If I could concentrate hard enough on them, maybe it would be enough to draw me out of the netherwhere.

A symbol appeared in my mind, and in my panic I wasn’t even sure which doorway it belonged to. I focused on it, grasping at it with all the energy I could muster, and it lit into lines of flame in my imagination.

The doorway spilled me out of the netherwhere, and I fell to my hands and knees, panting as if I’d been held under water.

I stayed there for several seconds, drinking in gulps of air and reveling in the pounding of my own heart. I was still alive. There was a muffled noise nearby. I raised my head. There was a glass door in front of me, and Lemony was on the other side. He rose to his back feet, placing his front paws on the door as if scratching to be let in. I was back in the vestibule of MonsterFit.

A strange smell clung to my clothes—metal and blood and decay. My entire body seemed to throb and itch, the sensation intensifying as the chill of the netherwhere wore off. I raised my arm and pulled back my sleeve to find red welts striping my skin.

I stared at them as my heart skipped a beat. I’d felt this before, once during training when we were learning strategies to fight magical vulnerabilities. Cold iron burns. If not for my New Gargoyle blood, those welts would be terrible, agonizing burns. For reasons unknown to us, New Gargs were a bit more resistant to iron than other races of Fae. But the longer the exposure, the worse the burns. Eventually cold iron would eat right through a Fae body.

My stomach turned. Somebody really didn’t want me to come out of the netherwhere alive. I swept my gaze side to side, suddenly paranoid. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to hang out right in front of a doorway. Who knew what might come through.

Just as I reached for the door handle to pull myself up, my phone began exploding with bleeps. I got to my feet and then pulled out the device, absently whispering the Faerie magic words that allowed me to pass out of the locked vestibule as if the walls were air.

The Vegas heat hit me like a furnace blast. Lemony began weaving around my legs while I scanned through my messages. There were half a dozen from Maxen. I read the first one.

Petra, are you okay? The club owner at Druid Circle was murdered by a wraith. He wrote your name in blood before he died.

I swallowed hard. Gregory was dead? Damn. Anger began to harden in the pit of my stomach. I’d just been with him at Druid Circle. He’d tried to help me, and now he was gone.

My breath died. That was what the dead smell was, the tendrils that had tried to squeeze the life out of me. A wraith had come after me in the netherwhere.

Each subsequent message was more urgent. I dialed Maxen, but his phone went to voicemail. I left a quick message to let him know I was alive.

I scrolled through the messages again, confused.

“I just saw Gregory,” I muttered. The wraith must have attacked him literally the second after I left and then come straight for me.

I looked up, shaking my head. Then I noticed the low angle of the sun. I looked down at my phone again to check the time and just stared. It couldn’t be right. Again, I looked at the sky and then at the digital clock readout.

In spite of the heat, my blood chilled. I’d been in the netherwhere for almost four hours.

I dialed Maxen again, and this time he answered.

“Petra?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “But I think the same wraith that killed Gregory tried to kill me in the netherwhere. It held me there for hours.”

“Thank Oberon you’re in one piece.” He let out a whoosh of a breath. “A wraith in the netherwhere? Damn it to Maeve. I’ve been searching for you in Faerie. No wonder no one’s heard from you in a while. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’ve got iron burns, but they’re not bad. Otherwise I’m fine.” I sounded a little calmer than I felt.

“Why would the owner of Druid Circle give the wraith your name?”

“It’s connected to my Guild assignment. I went to speak to the deceased right before I went into the doorway.”

“You can’t screw with wraiths, Petra,” Maxen said. “This is high-level. Way beyond merc work.”

I used my fingers to comb my hair back from my forehead.

“Don’t worry about it, Maxen. I’ll be fine.”

I forced a level tone, but inside I was pissed. Not at Maxen, but at whoever had sent the wraith to kill Gregory and then come after me. You had to be either desperate or extremely stupid to go after someone in the netherwhere. The doorways were made by ancient, intricate magic, and the netherwhere was a profound magical achievement. Trying to attack someone there was a real asshole move.

Yet, someone had done just that.

“Do you want me to tell Oliver?” Maxen demanded.

“No, Maxen,” I said, irritation edging my voice. “Please do not go tell my daddy.”

He sighed heavily. “Fine. But if you don’t show up at noon tomorrow, I go straight to Oliver.”

I echoed his sigh. “All right.” I knew he was just trying to look out for me.

“Be careful.”

“I will.” I hung up.

Letting out a long breath that ended in a grumble, I looked down at Lemony, who was sitting at my feet and flicking his tail. I reached for a treat and then tossed it to him.

The sensation of the wraith trying to squeeze the life out of me crowded into my mind again, and my heart thumped at the memory. I swallowed sourly and brushed my fingers across the front of my neck, still feeling the choking sensation.

Wraiths were disembodied spirits that on their own were harmless and invisible to the living. But if a living person caught a wraith and imbued it with magical power, it became a problem. The one who gifted the power also commanded the wraith.

Maxen was right about wraiths. They were nothing to screw around with.

“Not good, Lemony,” I muttered, bending to scratch the cat under his chin. “Even I’m willing to admit that.”

I straightened and looked off to the west, where the sun was balancing atop the high rises.

It was time to turn the screws on Van Zant. The wraith had to have come from someone who was associated with him. It was too big a coincidence that it had gotten my name out of Gregory, killed the club owner, and then come after me in the netherwhere. Gregory and I had only spoken twice and both times it was about Van Zant. That was our only connection.

Van Zant wasn’t the one actually commanding the wraith—that had to be a Fae—but I was certain it linked to him somehow.

I went back into the MonsterFit vestibule and traced certain sigils in the air with my index finger and whispered the magic words that opened doorways.

My destination wasn’t Carnival as I’d intended before. Instead, I used the doorway to travel to a pub in the Duergar realm. While I would need Maxen’s help to get into the Duergar palace where Nicole was being held, there were plenty of other places within the territory I could go without a bureaucratic chaperone.

The Aberdeen Inn was a pub in a Duergar-held realm in Scotland. Yep, as long as I knew the right sigils to draw, I could step through a doorway and go from a Vegas-anchored Faerie realm to a Scotland-anchored Faerie realm in a matter of seconds. Who said being Fae didn’t have its perks?

My destination doorway took me directly into the pub. I arrived in a corner that was roped off to keep anyone from loitering or moving a table there that would trip up visitors coming in from the netherwhere. The wooden planks under my feet were worn and bowed from thousands of years of countless Fae who had stood in this spot when they’d come and gone through the Aberdeen doorway.

The light was dingy and the aromas of beer, fried food, and sweat hung like a mist in the air that held a pleasant humidity compared to bone-dry Las Vegas. The pub was filled with a rainbow of Fae races, all showing their true forms. There was no need for any humanoid-illusion glamour in a place where non-Fae weren’t allowed. Every race of Fae could let their freak flags fly in places like the Aberdeen.

I flipped a wave to a couple of Fae Guild mercs who were obviously off-duty, but I wasn’t there to socialize. My time to track down Van Zant before I had to join Maxen for the trip to the Duergar palace was dwindling, and I had to find out who was behind the wraith. I needed to talk to the owner of the Aberdeen Inn.

Morven was a rare Ghillie Dubh, the only race of Fae allowed to remain independent from any kingdom. He stood behind the bar with his hand on a tap, looking like Santa Claus if old Saint Nick lost fifty pounds, started a serious weightlifting regimen, and trimmed his white facial hair to a neat quarter-inch of stubble.

No one save Oberon really knew how old Morven was or exactly where he’d grown up. He seemed like one of those institutions who spontaneously sprang to life just as he was now—gently wizened, sharp-eyed, and one of the most well-connected people in Faerie.

Aside from lack of kingdom affiliation, the other curious thing about Ghillie Dubh was that they had no qualms about coming to the aid of others. I could ask Morven for help without risk of the usual obligation that other Fae would normally incur. But a favor from a Ghillie Dubh wasn’t without a price. It was a price paid right away, and it wasn’t one that everyone could afford. You had to be very strong in magic, preferably with some unique quality, and possess nerves of steel. I had the first, my New Gargoyle blood gifted me the second, and my training and background provided me with nerve.

Morven’s gaze slid to me as I approached.

“Ah, Petra Maguire,” he said in his thick, rolling Scottish brogue. The way he pronounced my name always sent a little thrill up my spine. It somehow made me feel connected to the Old World. Even though I’d been raised in a realm anchored in the New World of the United States, Faerie began as territories anchored to the Old World—mostly Scotland, Ireland, and England. All of our roots were there, even mine.

“Hi, Morven.”

I leaned on the bar and watched as he finished filling the mug he held, stopped the tap to pour off some of the foam, and then added another half-inch of beer. He pushed the frosty, thick glass mug across the bar to the waiting hand of a tall Elf. He gave Morven a respectful nod and then moved away from the bar and looked for an empty seat at a table, even though the barstools were all unoccupied. The stools along the bar of the Aberdeen were almost always empty. Fae were generally a bit wary of Morven, keeping their distance as if they feared he would reach out and take a piece of them. He wouldn’t do that, of course. Not unless you asked him for help.

Morven lifted the corner of his dirty apron and wiped his hands on it. “So, you need the help of the Ghillie Dubh?”

“I do,” I said.

I appreciated the way Morven cut straight to the point when it came to requests. And somehow, he always knew when I was there to drink and when I was there for help.

“Why don’t we step upstairs?” He curled his hand, beckoning me to follow.

I walked behind him up a claustrophobic wooden staircase. It was so narrow Morven’s broad shoulders brushed the walls on either side. There was a smooth, smudged line at his shoulder height, evidence of decades, maybe centuries, of his passage up and down.

The stairs let out into a loft with a peaked ceiling overhead that revealed the roofline. Partitions partially divided the space, but there were no visible doors. The smells of the bar below had drifted up and gone somewhat stale in the stuffy space. We stood in an area set up as a little sitting room, with a thick but worn woven rug underfoot, a small coffee table, and three large, matching, high-backed wooden chairs that looked as if they’d come from a dining set.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” He gestured to one of the chairs, waited until I sat, and then lowered himself to the chair angled toward mine.

He crossed one ankle over the other knee and leaned on the armrest with a jolly Santa Claus smile on his face. His posture was easy, as if he had all the time in the world and not a care in his heart. But his twinkling eyes had turned intent with a faintly predatory gleam.

I swallowed and pushed my palms down the thighs of my jeans. I’d done this before and knew what to expect, but that didn’t make it easier. I couldn’t do this often—I didn’t want to—but sometimes it was the fastest route to something I needed.

“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked.

For one crazy second, I could almost imagine that I was a little human kid, ready to go sit on Santa’s lap and whisper my Christmas wishes in his ear.

“There’s a vampire, third generation. He goes by the name Van Zant,” I said. I saw a flicker of recognition in Morven’s eyes at the vamp’s name. That was good. It meant Morven had heard of him and might have information. “I need to know who’s escorting him around Faerie. And if you happen to know where he is right now, that would be helpful, too.”

Morven’s eyelids lowered a bit, as if he suddenly felt sleepy.

“I have the information you seek,” he said. Faint, brownish magic, like wisps of smoke, began to leak from his mouth.

Watching as his eyes darkened, I gripped the armrests of my chair, bracing myself for what Morven was about to do to me.