Chapter 29
I spent the night in jail.
I probably should have gone to the hospital, but Rianna’s spell had fixed most of the damage I’d taken.
I’d been found with a suspended FIB agent, my unconscious and brutalized sister, and three dead bodies. I probably should have been glad I didn’t end up somewhere worse than jail.
I sat in the tiny isolation cell, waiting for them to decide what to do with me. I slept intermittently. Each time I woke, I found Death sitting across the room, his eyes pinched tight as he watched me. When he noticed I was awake, he’d disappear without a word.
Sweet, but sort of creepy. He’d said he loved me. The thought made me smile—and want to run.
I lay on the unpadded cot and stared at the ceiling—or at least stared at where the ceiling should have been.
I’d been completely blind since releasing my hold on the grave—and apparently on reality. I hadn’t noticed at first because I was experiencing the world on a psychic level. Currently the Aetheric swirled around me, illuminating the room with threads of magic. When I blinked, the color disappeared, the room turning gray as the walls crumbled. The land of the dead. I blinked again, and the room glowed with remembered energy, the walls radiating the frustration and anguish of those who had been in the cell before me. I didn’t even know the name of that plane of existence. I sighed.
The vision thing was disconcerting, but I’d screwed with reality and channeled way too much power. This was clearly the backlash. I just hoped it wasn’t permanent.
“Alex?”
Roy? I sat up and stared at the ghost.“Where did you go last night? I didn’t see you after Rianna broke away from you.”
He shrugged and pressed his glasses up with a finger.
“Those soul collectors were gathering up ghosts. I had to get out of there.” He smiled. “But guess what? My body looks like me again. I just checked out the morgue, and I’m there! I mean, I look like what I should.”
“Congrats. Guess that means you’ll be moving on soon? Go wherever ghosts go next?”
His shoulders hitched forward. “Well, you see, about that … I still have that TV interview, remember? And then I was thinking I might hang out for a while. I mean, now that I have someone to talk to, being a ghost isn’t so bad.”
“Someone to talk to” being me. Great—I really do have a ghostly sidekick. If I got out of jail anytime soon.
As if summoned by my thought, an electronic buzz sounded. Roy vanished as a cop stepped up to the cell bars.
“Alex Craft, you’re free to go,” he said as the door slid open.
I unfolded from the small cot and followed the waiting officer into the hall. He led me down a cement-floored hall to a door, where another officer returned my personal effects in a brown paper bag.
“That’s it? I can go?”
The uniformed officer pursed his lips. After where I’d been found, I hadn’t expected to see daylight for a long time. But the door buzzed in front of me, and I walked into the lobby.
A man waited for me just beyond the door. He tugged awkwardly at the front of his expensive suit.
“Alex Craft?”
The officer nodded. “She’s good to go.”
The man frowned at me but said, “Please follow me.”
I glanced at the officer who had escorted me to the lobby. Exactly whose care was he releasing me into and under what conditions? The officer’s face gave away nothing.
Well, I can’t stay here forever. I followed the nervous man.
He led me out of the building. Then he walked up to a limo and opened the door for me.
Okay. That is not normal.
I leaned down and peeked inside. My father sat on the seat, a document in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other.
He looked up and tucked the file aside. “Come in, Alexis.”
I almost didn’t. I almost turned around and walked straight back inside. But curiosity won me over, and I climbed into the seat across from him. This ought to be good. If nothing else, I had some questions for him.
My vision peered into the Aetheric plane. My father was a silver soul of light surrounded by swirls of color, but none reached for him. The magic threads almost seemed to be avoiding him. Fae?
I blinked. He’s the fae in my blood?
“Your sister has asked about you,” he said, steepling his fingers and balancing his elbows on his knees.
I shook my head, too shocked to process his words. I had to blink several times—and watch the world change drastically before my eyes—before I figured out what he was talking about. “What did Casey say?”
“Just that you saved her. She is refusing to talk about what happened. Are you going to ask how she is?”
When I didn’t, he continued. “She is confused and will probably need counseling after this traumatic event, but she is a resilient girl. She will have scars, but she can acquire complexion charms to cover them. Otherwise, she is fine.”
She was cut up and needed counseling, but yeah—no problem; she was fine. Clearly using a different definition of the word “fine” than the rest of the world.
He leaned back, watching me. I waited. He’d gone out of his way to see me, so I assumed he had a reason, but he didn’t say anything. I shuffled in my seat, overly aware that I’d been through a car wreck, a magical battle, and a night in jail, while he looked fresh enough to have walked off a magazine cover.
When he still didn’t say anything, I grew annoyed.
“So, were you ever planning to tell us you were fae? Court fae from the look of it.”
My father didn’t even have the decency to look shocked that I’d figured out his secret. He just sat there, watching me.
Under his glamour, his short, professionally cut hair was longer, paler. His features were sharper—not grossly inhuman, but striking. And he looked young. My father didn’t look much older than me. His fae-mien also looked extremely familiar.
I frowned, trying to place this face that he kept hidden. Suddenly it clicked. The portrait of Greggory Delane at the statehouse. My father was the first governor of Nekros? That was over fifty years ago. My already aching head began to throb, and I shook it as if the movement could help settle my thoughts in place. It didn’t.
Still my father said nothing.
I glared at him. “You didn’t think being feykin was something your kids should know?”
“Feykin.” His lips twisted around the word as though he disliked the taste, and he shook his head. “There are humans with fae blood, Alexis. Then there are fae with human blood. The difference is the soul.” He leaned forward. “The Blood Moon called to the soul of Faerie. It woke many who were still sleeping, but its approach only quickened the inevitable.”
And just when I thought I was done with cryptic riddles.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is the long game,Alexis.” He smiled as if amused by my confusion. Then he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. He passed it to me. “I’d like to hire you retroactively for your part in uncovering the murder of my chief of staff and disrupting the plans of a megalomaniac.”
I plucked the slip of paper from his fingers and unfolded it. It was a check. A check with a lot of zeros on it.
Do I accept this? It was hard to refuse money, especially since I’d been working for free the past week and a half.
But I didn’t trust his motives. “What do you want?”
“The money is for services rendered. Nothing more.”
I stared at him. He was fae. He couldn’t lie. I pocketed the check. “Fine.”
He said nothing else, so I let myself out of the limo.
As I turned to slam the door his voice followed me out.
“Alexis, can you fix the rift in my house? Or should I lock the door and toss the key?”
I cringed. I hadn’t been able to fix reality, so a circular area in the middle of the Caine mansion was now a crossover point for the Aetheric into our plane of existence.
There were also a couple of spots of decay where the land of the dead had merged with reality. It probably wasn’t safe to leave it the way it was, but I didn’t know how to put things back in the right plane.
I met my father’s eyes. “Call a good locksmith.”
I stood back as the limo took off. Then I didn’t know what to do. Wonder if the cops will let me call home for a ride? I turned to head back up the stairs.
“Al!”
I turned as a car stopped on the curb. Caleb jumped out of the front passenger side. His huge arms wrapped around me, all but squeezing me in half. “We’ve been so worried about you, girl.”
We?
Holly and Tamara were right behind him, and I found myself in the center of a giant hug sandwich. They were warm, nearly too hot to touch comfortably, but right at that moment I didn’t care.
“Thanks for coming for me, guys,” I said, blinking back tears.
“We’re not the only ones here,” Holly said. “We brought you a surprise.”
She opened the back door of the car, and a smile cracked across my face. “John!”
He moved slowly, stiffly, but his mustache twitched in a smile.
“You’re awake,” I said, trotting up to him.
“Woke last night. Maybe it was the full moon.” He winked at me.
Yeah, the moon. I tried to hide my wince behind a cough that was only half forced.
John squeezed my shoulders. “I’d say good to see you’re okay, but you look rough. How you holding up?”
I forced a smile. “I’m good.”
“Well, we thought we’d take you to lunch, but …”
Tamara trailed off, her eyes taking in my fresh-out-of-a-horror-movie outfit.
Yeah. All I really want is to go home.
“Alex,” Holly whispered, nudging me with her elbow.
She nodded to the top of the stairs.
Falin had just walked out. His hand was still on the door, but he’d stopped, his eyes on our group. I looked around. There was no one here to meet him or take him home.
“I’ll be right back, guys,” I said as I headed for the stairs.
Falin met me halfway. He wrapped me in a hug both tender and world-encompassing, but when I tensed in his arms, he pulled back.
He stared at my face, and whatever he saw there didn’t make him happy. “Guess we don’t have a reason to work together anymore?”
I shook my head. “No, we don’t.”
Coleman had said Falin was the Winter Queen’s lover. The thought made my chest hurt as though I had another knife digging into me. I didn’t like the feeling. It would be smarter to say good-bye now. To not see him again. But that idea didn’t make me feel any better.
I don’t have to decide right now never to see him again. Yeah, he’d lied by omission, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have secrets myself. I had to stop sleeping with him, though—in any sense of the word. That just muddled everything.
And everything was confusing enough, what with seeing different planes of existence with each blink, blending reality, and finding out my father was fae. The one constant in my life, Death, had been terribly inconsistent.
And he’d said he loves me. I still didn’t know what to think of that, or how I felt. Keeping Falin around was a recipe for disaster when what I really needed was normalcy.
And yet, I didn’t want to say good-bye.
“You need a ride?” I asked, nodding at Holly’s car.
“I need lunch. You?”
I was hungry but … “What I want is a shower.”
“You can shower while I cook.” His smile was bright enough to thaw the ice in his eyes.
Already trouble. “You’ll have to make enough for six.” I wrapped my arm around his and led him down the stairs toward my waiting friends. “Oh yeah, by the way—get your toothbrush out of my bathroom.”