Chapter Twenty-Four
Tally
The last time I’d gotten an icepick migraine, I’d been a newlywed mundane and had cried myself to sleep after learning Jonathan was cheating.
That had been the first I knew of, but definitely not the only indiscretion up to that point. As an incubus, he’d probably turned my head with magic more times than I could count.
It turned out that faeries could get migraines. It just took ridiculously dark magic to hurt or put me down for any time at all. In some ways, that was reassuring. I was harder to hurt. On the other hand, if Astrid paced the room one more time, letting the light glint off her coppery hair, I was going to snatch her by it and force her to sit still.
I rubbed the pounding pulse in my temples, wondering for the umpteenth time how my metabolism worked. It would probably absorb drugs quickly. Too quickly to do me any good? I wasn’t sure. I hoped not. I doubted this was the last time I’d be cursed during my exceptionally long life span. Aspirin had been my best friend for years. I preferred over-the-counter magic to brews of unknown origin.
“What do you mean, Maverick is gone?”
That had been the most difficult thing to digest. Not that I’d been cursed into a week-long sleep alongside my boys while a Blood Witch ran amok at Blood Rose, trying to kill everyone in the establishment before they could discover she was alive. Then Meredith Boline had brought her mother in after Rook and Astrid failed to make scheduled contact. And as I understood it, Abraham and Aurea were in jail for what they’d done and this was all before I’d even cracked an eyelid open.
No, it was the fact that Maverick was gone—that was the fact that was sticking with me. As Astrid explained it, he’d evaporated into thin air. No one had seen him for the last few days. There were no phone calls. No texts. He’d ghosted all of us in a very literal sense. It took effort not to curl into a ball, feeling hideously empty. What he’d done was supposed to be impossible, magically speaking. He’d accomplished it with what amounted to the help of a demigod. Or maybe, a demon. Astrid seemed to think this Knox character was close enough to both.
“I mean, he’s gone,” she said quietly. “Whatever had Morgana had him too. I could feel that before he went poof.”
Astrid motioned vaguely at her head, face screwing into a pinched expression. Her features were almost vulpine. When she was unhappy, she resembled her Uncle Fox. I couldn’t blame her for it, but it didn’t help my mood. Or my poor aching gray matter.
“Mav was reading your thoughts?” I checked.
Astrid shrugged, making another circuit of the room. I closed my eyes, rather than let the firelight from the grate reflect off her hair and stab straight into my retinas.
“Yeah. Apparently, the really old vampires were just as magical as witches. Maybe more so, since they could break conventional rules. It’s sort of... anti-magic. The goddess literally invented new magic and then tried to stomp out any trace of it. It’s too dangerous. It’s why witches always burn the taint from the line.”
“I won’t let them burn him,” I said, half-rising from the plush armchair. The coven house was always a comfortable place to be. I avoided it only because I was not sexually liberated to survive in casual conversations with these women.
Astrid gave me a ‘duh’ look. I wasn’t sure how she managed to convey the meaning without the sound, but like many teens, she managed. “I won’t either. I don’t care if the big dolt has gotten himself into something stupid. We’ll drag him out of it.”
She said the words matter-of-factly, as though if she declared it, everything would work out. And who knew? She was a faerie monarch of Autumn. It just might.
I forced a smile. It wasn’t going to feel the same around here without him, but I had to live my life. I had a family to take care of. Even if the disaster of the week had passed us by, there’d always be another day. Another problem. I’d learned that the hits never really stopped coming when I’d been a cop. Becoming the heir to the throne of a court of Faerie had only solidified the feeling. I’d get through this because I had to. The point was: Maverick wasn’t dead. The coven had convinced me that I’d feel it if Maverick passed on. So, he was out there. Just... someplace none of us could scry. We’d done our very best to locate him and nothing. Whatever was in his body was going to regret snatching him from us, but it was going to take me some time to figure out how to go after him and how to defeat whatever this thing was that had him.
Astrid shook her head, setting the waves shimmering. “Can we talk about something else, please? Talking about Mav is depressing.”
She had a talent for understatement. I was sure I was going to cry tonight. I’d finally allowed myself to let him in and now he was gone. Not of his own will, but gone nonetheless. My bed would feel colder, my house quieter and less homey. He wasn’t dead, but he was gone.
I’m going to get him back, I vowed.
“Sure,” I said with a sigh. “What did you have in mind?”
Astrid performed a little shuffle step that instantly had my back up. I knew the guilty motion when I saw it. I’d done it myself at her age, when I’d attended a party my father had forbidden me to go to. She flinched away from my automatic glower of rebuke, raising her hands in surrender.
“It’s not bad, Tally, I swear. There’s just... a big decision to be made, that’s all. I’ll need to bring it to the Council for a vote, but ultimately, you’d get the final say.”
“What?”
The question came out from between my teeth. I already had a headache. I did not need political bullshit heaped onto my plate as I struggled to deal with the aftermath of a curse. My men were under the impression I’d taken paid leave to deal with a family emergency in Portland. I had to hand it to the coven. It was a plausible story. The boys at the station might give me a hard time for ignoring messages, but if I kissed ass with breakfast for a few weeks, we’d be square.
Astrid backed up a step. “Well, do you remember what the headmaster said when I was newly turned?”
“Remind me.”
“He said they were placing the conflict in the hands of Faerie until the families could be trusted again. Well, Lucretia Boline and I agreed that would be a lot easier if we moved the school here.”
“Move Blood Rose here?” I repeated.
She nodded. “Haven Hollow is a... well, it’s a Hollow. It’s accessible. Right now, there isn’t really a school system for monsters, but if we moved Blood Rose here, there could be.”
I held up a hand, trying to stave off the torrent of words. She was clearly excited about the idea.
“Are you saying you want me to... what? Oversee the school?” I asked as I shook my head. This was just too much. “I’m not a teacher, Astrid. Besides, how would we even make that work? If we open a private school or university here, there will need to be humans involved. Otherwise, there will be lawsuits. Courts. All that unpleasantness.”
“That’s just it. Trusted mundanes could be added to the list to act as support staff in keeping the secret. I mean, everyone would have to be thoroughly vetted. It will be a tad too Men In Black for my taste since memory charms will have to be more common, which I know you hate, but I think... I think the Hollows have been going about it wrong. We have to stop treating all of humankind like the enemy. Like it or not, they’re here and we need their support if we want to live in peace.”
Astrid did another shuffle-step, glancing up at me through her lashes. It was a young woman’s beseeching look to a mother figure. I hadn’t realized I’d stepped in and filled that role in her life at some point, but she was looking at me like... like she thought I could make things better. Not just stop them going badly, but improve them somehow.
I realized I could. Astrid was right. There wasn’t much of a system in place for kids. Education about the world we lived in, both mundane and magical, was restricted to the elite. What if we could start something here? If we did—with the school being in city limits—it was firmly in my jurisdiction. I could deputize people I thought could oversee it well.
I let out a sigh. “It’s going to be a huge undertaking, Astrid. Who would we even get to build the thing? It’s not like we can tear down Blood Rose stone by stone and import it here. I think it might raise some eyebrows when we go through customs.”
Astrid waved a dismissive hand. “That’s the easy part. Uncle Fox is living in Misty Hollow, which is currently under construction, remember?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “I can ask him for the names of the contractors. You’ll have your pick of people. It would also make it a lot easier for the Bolines to keep an eye on what’s being taught there. The factions have tried to kick off war twice in as many months, so she wants them under supervision.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about having another supernatural cop honing in on my turf, but decided to let it go for now. There were bigger things to worry about than a potential future institution in Haven Hollow. Like Maverick’s absence. The new threat posed by contaminated magic. Like my aunt’s continued battle for the throne.
And whatever the hell was causing the racket out in the street. There was a clap of deafening thunder, even though the night had been clear when I woke. Shouts and screams rose from the street. Unbearable pressure built between my ears before the sound bubble popped and it all poured over me. Those weren’t drunken hooligans outside. Those were screams of fear.
Astrid beat me to the front door. I was right behind her, launching myself down the steps with all the speed and agility of an Olympic sprinter. I stopped dead not long after clearing the railing of the front porch.
There was a dragon in the middle of the street. A huge, scaly dragon with crimson scales and eyes like burning embers. And it wasn’t even the scariest thing waiting for me. There were ogres. Enormous alligators, shaggy creatures I didn’t have names for. Exotics , Fifi, would have called them. They didn’t look even remotely human. And then there were those of us who could pass. I saw faeries and witches. Even a few vampires milled around, looking pale and nervous as they saw to the panicking children. That was where the screaming had come from.
God, kids. Some of them were bleeding. One looked so glassy-eyed with shock I was afraid she’d need to be committed. And above it all, the wind began to howl, cold winter air pouring off the hills like a landslide. The air froze in fractals when I breathed out. I whirled around, trying to find the source of the winter power pouring into my town. The last time I’d been surrounded by this much of it, a bunch of pixies had been trying to kill us all.
But it wasn’t Janara, Wren, or Rime waiting at the portal at the head of the street. It was Fox Aspen, swaying like a drunk in the mouth of the open portal. He looked awful , face sheened with sweat, as though he’d recently broken a fever. His face was still flushed an unhealthy shade of red, and his eyes were frantic as he seized another vampire and tossed her through.
The woman looked a little younger than my human glamour. Her hair was a shade of gold that reminded me of harvest corn. She landed on her ass in the street, betrayal spasming across her face when she realized he’d tossed her away.
“Don’t you dare!” she shouted at him, eyes sparking with fury.
“Sorry, Charlotte,” he said, and I somehow managed to hear his whisper, even over the wind. Then his eyes shifted to meet mine. They were harder than I’d ever seen them and full of accusatory fire.
“Take care of them, Taliyah,” he ordered.
And then the portal collapsed in on itself. The wind stopped howling, and the light coating of snow that had fallen on the street began to melt, unable to stay solid in the current climate. It left the night sodden, bloody, and utterly, utterly bereft of explanations.
There was only one thing I could say to that.
“What. The. Fuck just happened?”
The End