Chapter 2
Alexis
Bria was already waiting when Alexis showed up at the Magical San Francisco Government Building, right next to one of two spots labeled “Demigod.” The other was occupied by a cherry-red Ferrari, an older vehicle with all sorts of sentimentality.
It was the car Kieran had nearly (and purposely!) run over Lexi with, resulting in the first time she and Kieran had met. Good times.
He’d obviously been thinking about the past when he chose it to drive today.
Thinking about how Daisy had resisted his integration into their lives and her tight family unit.
Had secretly stolen money from him at every turn to create an “out” should he become power hungry and abusive like his Demigod father before him.
Daisy had been thinking of the future and preparing should she need to rip them away from this life.
At fifteen years old, she’d been trying to protect her family. Fifteen!
She didn’t feel more secure now, Lexi knew.
Daisy had become an ace at investing—just in case—in both magical and non-magical markets.
Had contacts everywhere. Had safe houses, secret offshore bank accounts, and friends in very low places.
She was ready for the Demigod apocalypse, even though Lexi was now a Demigod herself.
There was nothing Daisy wouldn’t do to help her family.
Nothing. She was hard, but she was sweet, in her own way.
Ravaged by life, but saw the joy in it, too.
Above all, she relished in the love of her family.
And that piece-of-shit fairy fucker had stolen her from the only happiness she’d ever known. He’d pay for this. The Celestials, too. What the fuck were they doing? Besides not doing their jobs. They needed a hard lesson in work ethic, that’s what they needed.
Lexi planned to give it to them.
She flung open the door of the beat-up old Bronco and stepped out in clothes she’d picked herself.
Let the magazines and gossip columns talk shit—for once, she didn’t care.
Daisy wasn’t there to pick out her clothes and style her.
Now the columnists would know Lexi hadn’t grown a sense of fashion; it was still all thanks to her “filthy” Chester ward who “didn’t belong” in the magical zone.
Fuck those people.
“Well, hello,” Bria said, her platinum-blond hair falling straight to her shoulders. She wore a light blue Nirvana T-shirt, acid-wash jeans, and a spiked dog collar around her neck. She had never cared about the fashion columns. “Love those pants. Are we preparing for a flood?”
Lexi left her handbag in the Bronco and the doors unlocked. She half hoped someone was stupid enough to steal it. It would really help her mood if she could get some of this pent-up pain-turned-aggression out of her system.
“Oh! And we’re free-boobin’ it, too?” Bria cracked a grin and stepped out of the way. “Nice! I’m diggin’ it. How’s the mental health?”
“How do you think?”
“I think you keep jabbing me in the spirit box by accident, and it is not so pleasurable.”
A spirit box was the casing of a person’s soul, and as a Spirit Walker (not so affectionately called a Soul Stealer), Lexi had the power to crack that thing open and rip the spirit right out.
She could kill with a flick of her power.
Then, if she wanted, she could stuff that spirit back in, tether it to the dead body, and reanimate it, creating the walking dead.
She had a rare type of magic that was generally regarded as horribly terrifying.
It was a “glad she’s on our side” situation in magical San Francisco.
“Sorry,” she told Bria, pulling back and tamping down her power. “I’m not doing great. It’s been two days since Daisy was taken right under our noses. We were in the fucking car, Bria! Our whole team was with her, and we couldn’t keep those…things from grabbing her unconscious body.”
Her stomach filled with lead at the memory of those disgusting, shadowy fae things swooping in and scooping up Daisy’s limp form.
Lexi had felt the bright effervescence of her soul, so she knew her ward was still alive, but the image still haunted her and racked her with guilt.
She was supposed to be protecting Daisy, not offering her up to the enemy.
To the creatures—fae— they’d known about but hadn’t done anything to fortify against.
They’d failed her, and they all knew it.
“Self-loathing doesn’t get the job done,” Lexi mumbled dutifully, quoting Zorn. He’d said that to her a lot over the last couple days. To himself, probably, too.
“No, but it does help us make terrible decisions, like buying every tub of ice cream in the store and eating until you throw up. The good news is, I’ve found a couple new favorite flavors.
Bad news…well, last night didn’t end well.
It’ll be okay. You’ll see, Lexi. That little gremlin is adept at staying alive, Kieran is amaze-bouche at complex planning, and our team is excellent in the trenches.
With Zorn’s lifelong collection of notes on all things Faerie, we’ll get her back and hopefully kill a great many fae as we do. ”
Their inner crew, what they’d all come to think of as their family, stood around the oval table in the conference room.
Kieran glanced up when she entered the room, his blue eyes fierce and his hair mussed from running his fingers through it.
The others continued to look at the documents rolled out across the large table.
“What’ve we got?” she asked as Jack scooted over to make room. He wore a tan suit that barely fit around his huge arms.
It was Amber who spoke. “I’ve checked three well-known portals to the fae realm.
All are open and operational. None are guarded by fae—not on this side or the other.
If the fae mean to set a trap, it isn’t around the portal.
” She paused for a beat. “But the people who service the portals say there has been a lot of activity in the last few years. More and more each year.”
“Do we know why?” Lexi asked.
“The attendant who asked the fae, a year back, was killed for the question.” Zorn straightened.
“No one else has dared. But given the other information we’ve been able to collect from various fae entering this realm—creatures as well, however they are getting through—we can assume the Celestials aren’t doing what they are supposed to do.
I can believe there is one very clever, very powerful fae, but bands of them?
” He shook his head. “This problem goes beyond Daisy. We’ve seen more death and violence recently, as well.
The fae coming over are not trying as hard to fit in.
The longer they are ignored, or the more that are let through, the bigger the problem we’ll face until their magic takes root. In which case…”
Disaster.
If that magic rooted and grew, it would change the face of their world. They were seeing the beginning stages. If they allowed this problem to linger, it would turn nasty in a hurry.
She nodded, waiting for more.
“We think we have a lead on her, but…” He put his fists on the table.
“The fae that took her into the portal seemed to be from the Sapphire kingdom, given their skin was greenish. They smelled like…sea salt and kelp. The fae we saw on our cameras, when the body was dropped off on the lawn, didn’t match that description.
We have multiple factions of fae interested in Daisy.
We don’t know where she was taken.” He paused, and she could see his struggle to keep his emotions at bay.
“We don’t know where to go to look for her. ”
Lexi bit her lip. This was her piece of the puzzle.
She could slip into spirit, leaving her body behind, and track a soul.
Once she found it, she could figure out where the person was in the world.
Time was of the essence, though. Leave the body behind for too long and it would die without its soul.
It wouldn’t allow the soul to re-dock. Have someone else find her body without her soul in it, and they could kill her as easily as a sleeping person.
Maybe more so, since she’d have to travel back to re-inhabit, and a sleeping person would just wake up.
For those reasons, extra precautions were always required.
She wouldn’t have given a shit about those precautions the night Daisy was taken except for being in a moving vehicle.
She’d never chased her body while in spirit.
She didn’t want to try and fail—and die—when Daisy needed her.
By the time she’d gotten home and safeguarded herself, Lexi couldn’t find Daisy’s soul.
She could feel it, but it was a strange…
echo, almost. Neither in existence nor gone.
She hadn’t known what to make of it. Then the next day, the soul was gone entirely. Vanished.
Based on the time frame, they were guessing the echo must’ve been when Daisy had crossed the portal.
In this world but…not. She wasn’t in the underworld—Lexi had checked.
No one could hide a soul from her, save for Hades himself, and she knew the undertaker personally. Hades didn’t know what was going on.
Then, when her soul vanished, Lexi could only guess—dearly hope—that Daisy had crossed into Faerie, a place ruled by other gods. Older gods with a different spirit plane. One Daisy was hopefully not in. Lexi had to believe her kid was still alive. She had to believe she could still get Daisy back.
To do that, they had to go after her. Lexi desperately hoped she could track Daisy once in the other realm. They didn’t have time to blindly check several kingdoms. Daisy’s life was dependent upon Lexi’s being able to use her magic across the portal.