Chapter 8 #2
My heart hurt for her, but it hurt even more for the sixteen-year-old boy who’d been caught up in something he’d never asked for.
“You think it’s Blake, don’t you?” Kira asked bluntly.
“Yes.” It was the only thing that made sense of the scent trails. An Idrian would leave a trail wherever they went, but when a human used stolen Idrian magic, the only thing a shifter would smell was the magic itself.
But what mattered the most now—other than finding the missing boy—was why.
Blake had seemed to have no difficulty recruiting humans to his cause, and for good reason. He was promising them the ability to wield magic. Promising them power, which was a compelling incentive for the discontent—a category that encompassed nearly everyone at one time or another.
“You think he’s trying to stir up trouble with the humans? Get them to blame Idrians for the kidnapping?”
It was possible. “I think that would be a happy by-product for him. It just doesn’t make sense if that’s all he wants out of it.”
Jeremiah was just a kid. No one influential or visible.
If Blake was going to take the risk of committing a crime like kidnapping with the intent of pinning it on Idrians, he wouldn’t choose someone the local authorities would dismiss.
He would go after someone high profile. Someone whose disappearance would make the evening news.
Now that I thought about it, that was an all too horrifying possibility. He could commit any number of crimes using his stolen magic, pin them on Idrians, and then sit back and watch the chaos.
But that still didn’t explain his choice of target.
“We still need to confirm whether the kidnappers were actually human,” I reminded her. “Which means I need to find whoever Callum asked to sweep the van for prints.”
“You’ll have to ask him.” Kira shot me a sideways glance as she headed east on Twenty-third Street. “You know he’s probably just tied up. In the figurative sense,” she hastened to add. “The fae aren’t going to tackle someone like Callum when they’re neck deep in their own problems.”
Sure. Let’s go with that. I held my breath and tried calling him again.
Again, it went straight to voicemail.
It was late, I told myself. He needed sleep. I would try again in the morning.
“Have you heard much from Draven since he left?”
Kira grimaced. “Enough to know that he’s safe, but the situation is still dire. If Dathair doesn’t wake up soon, the court is going to force the coronation of a new king, and we aren’t sure Rath has enough supporters.”
“I thought the fae monarchy was hereditary.”
“It usually is,” Kira noted, “at least nominally. But the heir has to show himself capable, and even a king lasts only as long as he’s able.
Fair or not, the fact that Dathair fell to poison throws his son’s capability into doubt.
And it doesn’t help that Rath himself has been playing the part of a genial idiot for most of his life. ”
“So everyone is waiting around to stab each other in the back, and whoever lasts the longest becomes the new king?”
“Basically.” In the glow of the streetlights, Kira’s expression was grim. “Essentially, it ensures that whoever rules the fae is the most cruel and ruthless of the bunch.”
“And whoever doesn’t rule…”
Dies.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, but Kira could easily fill in the blanks. “Yes. And despite his illegitimacy, as Dathair’s son, Draven will be considered a threat by the other contenders. Especially since he’s been so unwavering in his support of Rath.”
I shivered. She had to be terrified right now. “I’m sure you’d know if anything bad had happened,” I said quietly.
“To Draven?” Kira chuckled darkly. “I almost hope they try attacking him. He’s more powerful than most of them realize, so they’d be in for a deadly surprise. Might knock a few of Rath’s enemies out of the running.”
I wished I had that much confidence in Callum’s safety. But while he was visiting the Fae Court, he would be unable to shift without provoking a war, and had no other magic to defend himself.
Kira suddenly let out a rueful laugh. “Here I am, driving back to The Portal, when I should be taking you home.”
Home, with Kes, Ethan, Logan, and Ari. Home, with my worries about Ethan’s magic, Ari’s teleporting, and Logan’s volatile emotions. A home we would soon be evicted from temporarily while the water damage was fixed.
I wasn’t sure where we would go, but we would figure it out. We’d dealt with far worse since we became a family, and a little flood wasn’t going to break us.
It was late, and the streets were nearly empty as we headed back towards my apartment. Both of us were lost in our own thoughts when Kira’s phone buzzed with a text.
“Can you check that?” she murmured, eyes glued to the road.
I picked it up.
“The number isn’t in your phone, but… the first line says it’s Rath.”
She slammed on the brakes so fast the tires skidded, then pulled into an empty parking spot on the curb and snatched up the phone.
“I don’t know if I should trust it,” she muttered. “He said his phone got smashed in an ambush. He’s fine, and so is Draven, but he has a contact he needs me to meet at a park north of here.”
It sounded legit, but then, scams always did. And we couldn’t check its authenticity, since neither Draven nor Callum were answering their phones.
“Why not just give you the contact’s phone number?” I queried suspiciously.
“He said she’s a pixie herbalist,” Kira explained. “Kind of a hedge-witch, hangs out in the woods kind of vibe. And pixies aren’t huge fans of technology, so she might not even have a cell phone. But I’m betting they’re hoping she can make an antidote for Dathair.”
I still didn’t like it, but if Rath’s information turned out to be accurate and she agreed to help? This could solve so many of our problems. Dathair could return to his throne. Draven could come home. And Callum could… at least call me back.
“Okay,” I said. “We can check it out. But we tell everyone where we’re going first, in case we end up needing backup.”
“Heh heh.” Kira’s laugh was dark and a little evil. “If this is a plot, it’s the stupidest plot ever. But if they’re going to give me an excuse to beat up on a few fae backstabbers, I won’t say no.”
So instead of continuing south, she took a left on Fourth, and shortly afterwards headed north on I235.
“Seems like a strange choice of home for an herbalist,” I mused aloud as I sent messages to Faris, Kes, and after a brief hesitation, Shane. “You’d think she’d want to live somewhere stuff actually grows.”
“The cool thing is, pixies can grow things anywhere.” Kira sounded sad and a little wistful. “You should have seen the flowers that Shane’s mom used to grow at my bookstore. Pots and pots, overflowing with whatever she felt like that year.”
“You were close with her, weren’t you?”
She shrugged a little. “Misty was more my aunt’s friend than mine, but she always acted kind of like a second mom. Nagged me about being safe and not talking to strangers and eating my vegetables. And when the time came, she helped push me out of the nest so I could fly on my own.”
“Sounds like she did a good job.”
At least, I assumed so. Those seemed like the kinds of things a good mom would do. My own mom had barely seemed to think about me at all, which was probably why I felt so lost trying to be a replacement mom for Ari and Logan—I knew a lot more about what not to do.
Kira somehow managed to read my mind. “You’re doing a good job, too.”
“I feel like I’m failing,” I confessed. “Ari is constantly putting herself and others in danger, and Logan barely talks to me. I know they’re dealing with their own trauma, and instead of helping them, I’m barely keeping them safe and fed.”
“And loved,” Kira said softly. “You love them, and they know it. You make sacrifices every day for their sake. And no matter what else is going wrong, that’s what they need from you the most—the security of knowing you’re there and you aren’t going to abandon them.”
I hoped she was right. I hoped I wasn’t messing it all up.
I hoped I wasn’t in over my head with Ethan in a way that would destroy all the progress we’d made with Ari and Logan.
I hoped that my little family would survive and grow stronger.
And I hoped that in the end, Callum wouldn’t change his mind because of all the baggage that I brought with me…
That train of thought was going nowhere good, so I changed the subject, hoping to distract myself from this cycle of worry. “So where are we meeting?”
“Martin Nature Park. It’s right off the turnpike on the north side of the city. There’s a nature center and a creek and a pond, but mostly it’s just wooded trails, with a few open fields. Feels like you’re in the wilderness even though you’re surrounded by city.”
I could see how that might appeal to a nature-loving pixie.
“Won’t it be closed this time of night?”
Kira grinned. “Not to a dragon and a fox. We’re just part of nature, right?”
Oh, to possess even half her confidence. “Fine, but if we get caught, I’m blaming you for being a bad influence.”
“Ooh, promise?” She wiggled a little in her seat. “I’ve always wanted to be a bad influence on someone, but I’m terrible at it. Just ask Draven.”
It took about ten minutes to make the drive to the park. The main entrance was indeed closed and gated as I’d feared, so we parked at a nearby bank and then headed back up the road, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.
There was a fence around the perimeter, but it wasn’t much of a challenge to climb, even for Kira. As we dropped to the ground inside the fence, she started to jog off, so I grabbed her arm to hold her back.
“First, let’s see if you smell anything. I know you can’t shift again, but…”
“Says who?” Kira challenged.
“Callum told me shapeshifters usually can’t shift more than once in a day. At least not without collapsing after.”
“That’s for normal shapeshifters,” she announced smugly. “I’m me. I just don’t want to shift out here unless I have to. I like this shirt, and I don’t want to ruin it.”
Despite the darkness and my apprehension, I almost laughed.
This was why I adored Kira. Literally nothing got her down for long, and she brought a sense of levity and undaunted cheerfulness to pretty much any situation—even late-night breaking and entering that was probably going to end up being a trap.
“Okay, that’s fair. But I still think we should take this slow. At least check for any signs that we’re about to be attacked by goblins or rabid wereskunks or something.”
“All I smell is…” She sniffed the air. “Nasty pond water. Dirt, dead leaves, trees, exhaust… the usual. Maybe some turtles. No skunks, weirdly enough—rabid or otherwise.”
I paused. “What do turtles smell like?”
“A little like fish, and a little like rocks after a rain.” She shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”
None of it sounded too worrying, so we made our way up the drive into the empty parking lot. The moon was full and bright enough to show that there was no immediate sign of our contact, which only seemed to confirm my suspicions.
“Did the message say where to go? Or just to show up at this park? Please tell me we aren’t meeting her in some mysterious cottage in these dark and creepy woods.”
“Nah, we’re looking for the open field just west of here. We’re supposed to wait there and she’ll find us.”
Yep, this was sounding more and more like a trap to me. Just as a precaution, I gauged the distance to the pond and flexed my elemental magic. I was pretty sure it was close enough that I could grab the water and use it as a weapon if I needed to, but the thought didn’t make me feel much better.
Why had I agreed to this again? Oh right, because Kira was persuasive, and I wanted to see Callum. Not very good reasons now that I thought about it a little harder…
My heart rate sped up, and every sense came alive as we stepped out of the parking lot and into the field mentioned in the directions.
There was enough moonlight—combined with the lights from the city—to show us major obstacles, but not to illuminate our footing, so I stumbled a little as we crossed the uneven surface.
When we reached the center of the field, Kira stopped and consulted her phone. “This should be it. I guess we just wait for a bit and see whether…”
She froze in place. Every muscle went still, and her eyes lit with an amber glow. “Do you smell that?”
I sniffed the air, but since I was technically a human, my shapeshifter sense of smell was limited to my shifted form—a tiny white fox that would be useless in a fight.
“Nope. But I’m guessing it’s not a pixie.”
“Fae,” she whispered, as the corner of her mouth curled up with what I could have sworn was satisfaction. “Well, what do you know? Looks like it turned out to be a trap after all.”