Chapter 18
E veryone sucked in a breath. As though the air particles in the room suddenly stopped moving altogether, I felt the weight of my words and knew I should have asked them something else. I didn’t even need Tris grumbling in my ear to tell me that I may have overstepped too soon.
A bird crashed against one of the windows, making all of us jump in our seats.
I couldn’t help but notice the man across from me, sitting next to Brodie, hadn’t stopped glaring my way.
It felt like he was pushing me into my seat, even though he wasn’t touching me. What kind of freaky power was that?
“You know, everyone,” Saoirse said after recovering from the bird thing and my question, “I think we are finished for today.” She turned to look at her plants on the back wall as though expecting all of us to listen without argument.
I briefly wondered if she also had a little bit of persuasion abilities in her as well.
“Sosie, we think you should get out of there.” I didn’t like the way Tris’s voice was at a slightly higher pitch. And when I noticed the others still staring at me in a very creepy way, I agreed.
“Nice to meet you,” I muttered before briskly walking toward the double doors. I expected to hear footsteps behind me, but as I made my way through the store and outside onto the street, no one was following .
And for some reason, that worried me even more.
I jogged down the street and around the corner where Tris and Wylen were waiting.
When I saw the two of them a block away, I felt the biggest sense of relief and safety.
It was dusk, and the dark shadows of the buildings were creeping their way into my path like the vines Saoirse controlled with her halfling power.
“Holy shit,” I breathed once reaching Tris and Wylen. Tris wrapped me in a warm hug and held me a few seconds longer than normal. It felt good, and I finally let the fear shiver out of me as I melted into his arms.
Wylen walked over to us and placed his hand on my shoulder. That warmth and calming sensation trickled over my skin, instantly soothing my nerves. And before it made its way through my whole body, he took a step back and dropped his hand.
“Thank you,” I said to him.
He nodded and looked at Tris, who was watching us closely. “Did you capture all of that on video?” Wylen asked.
With a small chuckle, Tris pulled away and smiled down at me. “Wylen’s having a hard time understanding human technology.”
“I am not,” he whined. “I was just asking if?—”
“Yes. You want to know if it actually recorded. Trust me, man. I know what I’m doing.”
The tension started rising to the point I knew I needed to intervene. I wondered how they’d managed the last hour while I was in the meeting. “Something’s going on with them,” I said.
“You think?” Tris huffed as he worked to pack up the equipment.
Pulling the microphone out of my bra, I did my best not to get annoyed.
“More than what we saw, Tris. My gut is screaming at me right now. When I asked them about the missing fae? They changed. For sure, they are hiding something.” I finally yanked the cord out of my dress and unhooked the battery pack from my underwear, instantly feeling ten pounds lighter. “We need to follow Saoirse tonight. ”
“What?” Tris asked with more surprise than I would have anticipated.
“Follow Saoirse. Tonight. Let’s see where she goes, where she lives, find out who she talks to?—”
Tris stood and looked at his comm phone for a moment before tucking it away in his back pocket again. “Sosie, I can’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tris hefted up his backpack and clipped it around his chest. “I told you. I have to be somewhere.”
“Somewhere more important than following the story? Come on, Tris. You love doing this as much as I do.”
He shifted his weight from side to side. All the while, Wylen stood in the shadows and watched in silence. “I can’t. But take Wylen with you if you really think following her is going to get us some more information.”
“Us?” I snapped.
“Don’t, Sosie.” Tris sighed. “Use your comm phone to video, and I’ll call you when I’m finished so we can plan the next steps.”
“I’m planning the next steps now!” I shouted, not caring who else could hear me. Tris and I were a team—we always worked on investigations together. “Where are you going that’s so damn important you can’t cancel?”
Tris sucked in a breath, and Wylen cleared his throat. Did he know? I glared at the fae and then reminded myself I wasn’t mad at him.
“I have a meeting with Razi.”
“Razi? What for?”
“To discuss the fights.”
“For our research?” The words came out of my mouth, but I already knew the answer. He wasn’t doing this for the sake of the investigation.
“No.”
“Tris, really?” I whined. “You’re going to fight for money now? Or fight to the death?”
He shrugged, the backpack moving up and down with his shoulders and making a loud swishing sound. “I’m not fighting to the death, and it’s not about the money, Sosie. I need to learn more about…about who I am. What’s in my blood. And I would think you, of all people, would understand that.”
“Don’t try to play the half-fae card on me,” I grumbled, knowing he was right. “Fine. I’ll do it on my own.”
“No, you’ll have Wylen with you.”
I should have punched him in the face. “Um, no. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“But I want to follow the halfling, too, Sosie,” Wylen cut in. “You are correct, there is more to this story, and we need to investigate. For Gil.”
Thoroughly putting things into perspective, I hated to admit that Wylen was right. We needed to do this in order to find Gil. Who cared if Tris was going to bail? “Fine,” I said to my friend. “Go. But promise me you won’t do anything stupid?” Like get yourself killed.
His smile lit up my soul. And when he bent forward and gave me one of his trademark kisses, I nearly melted underneath him. “I’ll do my best,” he teased. Then, all serious as he pulled up to his full height, he turned to Wylen. “Do not, and I mean do not , let her out of your sight. Got it?”
My protests were drowned in Wylen’s oath to protect me with his life and blah blah blah. Giving me one last kiss on the cheek, Tris jogged away to where he’d parked his bike in the garage the next block over.
“Let’s go find a stakeout spot,” I told Wylen as I turned on my heel.
“Stakeout?”
“Hunting ground. High ground. Hiding place. Not sure what you would call it.” I didn’t need to say any more as the look of understanding passed over Wylen’s face.
“We are hunting now.”
While I wasn’t in agreement with his choice of vocabulary, he wasn’t wrong. “Yes. ”
“I am good at hunting.”
We didn’t say anything else as I led us across the street that Divine Pathways was on and then ducked into an alleyway that I hoped would take us around the back of the commercial buildings.
Once we reached the opening of the tiny, brick-paved passage, I held out my hand to stop Wylen.
Surprisingly, he listened to me. Not even a breath left his mouth, and for a second, I thought that maybe he was a better sleuthing partner than Tris.
But I did miss Tris, and I didn’t like the feeling of him not being by my side.
“There’s the back entrance,” I whispered, pointing down the dirt road that was just wide enough for a single car to pass through.
There was a large sedan parked outside the door…
maybe an old Lincoln or even a Cadillac.
Jotting down the license plate number into my tiny notebook, I whispered, “Now we just have to be patient.”
I crouched down, wanting to stay as hidden as possible but still able to see if anyone was going to come out of the shop. Wylen followed suit and sat across from me. He’d tucked his long legs into a butterfly position and sat with his straight back against the wall.
“Are you mad, Sosie?”
“Mad?” I asked.
“At troll boy?”
I huffed a laugh. “I see Tris’s nicknames are rubbing off on you. And yes, kind of. I’m mad that he’s not here with me.”
“If I may,” Wylen started, and I just knew I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. “It is good for Tris to learn about his kind. They are an obnoxious, stinky species that breeds like the wretched summer moths, but they are still a part of him.”
I wasn’t sure which part of that statement to digest first. “I’m not disagreeing with you.
Since his mother has been less than forthcoming and most of his relatives are dead, if he can learn something that puts his mind at ease, then he should know about it.
” And as soon as those words left my mouth, I thought about my own mother and the lies she’d told me my whole life.
The last few days had been so full of new experiences and investigations that I hadn’t been back to talk to her again.
I wasn’t even sure I was ready for that.
But as I sat in a dark alley with Wylen to spy on a bunch of halflings, I realized I needed to speak with her soon.
Even just to let her know how her one request to help find Gil had greatly impacted my life.
Wylen studied me for several moments. Even in the limited light, the few pieces of fine blond hair that stuck out from under his ball cap shimmered.
His bright white sneakers also seemed to glow in the few rays from the street lamp sitting near that parked car.
Perhaps we should have gone with more black…
“What?” I finally asked him when he wouldn’t stop staring at me.
“You mean what you say.”
“I usually do.”
“No.” He shook his head. “About Tris. You want him to learn.”
“Of course I do. We’re best friends, and that’s what a friendship means. You support each other.” Most of the time.
Wylen grinned. “You are more than friends.”
Feeling the blush creep up my neck, I secretly thanked the dark night for hiding my embarrassment about the shower incident the other day. “Yes, I guess we are.”
“You know, monogamy is not the way of the fae. Nor the trolls, if I must admit.” I opened my mouth to stop him from saying anything else, but it was too late.
“In Ashtabulah, the fae take multiple partners at the same time. There are many benefits, of course, but most importantly, you are never disappointing all of them at once.”
“Wylen…”
“We start young, too. That way, a fae has experience by the time they are ready to make their final choices.” He paused and looked off into the distance like he was trying to remember something. “The trolls take mates as they find them— willing or not.”
I cringed at the thought and then quickly pushed it out of my head forever. That wasn’t the type of person Tris was.
“Well, humans and human society are different.”
“Is it?” Wylen asked, and I should give him credit for being so observant, even though his arrogance irritated me quite a bit. “Your father, for example, must have had multiple partners after he left our realm.”
“Stop, Wylen.”
“And maybe multiple children, too. Tris’s sire as well…the trolls are focused on breeding, and if his grandfather was a troll?—”
“Wylen, please stop.”
“There may be several more bloodlines out there related to your Tris.”
“That’s gross, and I don’t want to think about it?—”
A door slammed shut in the alley, instantly cutting off any more talk about breeding and mating, and I quickly leaned to the side to peek out.
Wylen did the same, so I had to push quietly to standing just to see over his massive head.
Four people walked out of Saoirse’s shop.
I recognized three of them from the meeting, but the fourth was apparently the driver of the car, and I didn’t believe I’d seen him before.
“What are you doing?” I mused to myself.
Wylen looked up at me but kept quiet. They appeared to be arguing. Saoirse’s arms were flailing about while the other woman, Maren, I think, covered her mouth with her hands. Donald stayed back with this “I told you so” look on his face while glaring at Saoirse.
Saoirse gestured for the man, who must be the driver, to move closer to the car. He kept trying to tell her something while she kept waving him away.
“Can you hear them?” I asked Wylen.
He didn’t turn to look at me. “They are arguing about a plan. I don’t think the car is supposed to be here. Saoirse keeps telling the man that he screwed up and fucked them all. ”
It was a little strange hearing the vulgarity leave Wylen’s mouth, but I kept my surprise inside. Instead, I watched. The man getting yelled at used his keys on the trunk of the car, finally getting them to fit. But before opening it up, he spoke to the others again.
Whatever they said convinced him to lift the trunk…and Wylen and I watched as a human arm fell out over the side.