Chapter 19
When the Nomad informed me earlier this evening to prepare myself for the final member of our team to be eccentric, I had not taken him seriously enough.
It’s nighttime when we go to visit this “friend” at an oddities shop full of baubles I can’t make out, not since the lights in the storefront have been turned off.
The doorbell jingles as we enter, the Nomad right behind me, but after waiting a few moments, it seems as if no one plans to meet us at the counter.
Still, as eerie as the place is, it isn’t noiseless. There’s a whirring coming from behind the curtain on the far side wall, the one behind the counter.
The Nomad steps in front of me, then gestures soundlessly with a nod for me to follow.
Why he wanted me to come with him to recruit his friend is beyond me.
Then again, “old friend” could mean a lot of things when we’re talking about the Nomad.
While most people would use the term to refer to someone they’ve been friends with for years, I could see the Nomad meaning something more along the lines of we used to be friends, but now I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to slit my throat in the middle of the night.
Given how the Nomad raises a finger to his lips before quietly moving back the curtain, I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.
When he draws back the curtain, he reveals what appears to be a laboratory. Tables line the room, overflowing with glass vials. Most of them are stoppered, the rest looking as though they probably should be stoppered but someone forgot.
I make a mental note not to knock anything over.
It’s not the vials that give me pause, though.
It’s the walls.
They’re covered in glass shadow boxes, each of which displays a different set of wings.
The blood drains from my face, as I pull my trench coat tighter around my torso.
Most are insect wings—butterflies, dragonflies, moths, that sort of thing. But on the far wall in the center of the display are wings much too large to belong to any insect.
I shoot a glare at the Nomad, but if he senses it in his periphery, he pretends not to. Instead, he stuffs his hands into his pockets and quietly examines the man on the far side of the room.
The man is young, but you wouldn’t know from his hair, which is red but already graying. He’s clean-shaven and slightly freckled, but in a way that tells me those freckles haven’t been helped along by the sun in many years.
He’s hunched over something, taking a pair of tweezers to it as he examines it through a monocle that makes one of his blue eyes look, well, rather buggish.
We stand there watching him for what feels like forever. Finally, I nudge the Nomad with my elbow, and he rolls his eyes.
“Lars.” He says the man’s name rather forcefully for a first attempt, in my opinion, but when the man doesn’t look up from whatever he’s working on, I silently rescind my opinion.
“Lars,” he says again, this time louder.
Lars blinks and scrunches his face, looking as if the Nomad had woken him from a deep slumber, not called his name while he was alert enough to be making precise cuts. When he finally looks up, his right eye expands to the rim of his monocle at the sight of the Nomad.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting from Lars, but it’s not for him to say, “Your companion isn’t as pretty as the last one.”
I rear back.
“Which offends you more?” asks the Nomad. “His insulting your looks, or the assumption that you would ever deign to be with me?”
I hold up two fingers, to which the Nomad grunts something that sounds like, “I thought so.”
Although, if I were given a truth serum, the answer would be a close tie between the two.
“Tink is a colleague. Just as ‘the last one’ was,” says the Nomad before leaning over and whispering quite loudly, “For the record, I disagree with his evaluation.”
I don’t have the opportunity to respond to that, because the Nomad addresses his friend, who has already gone back to whatever he’s working on.
“I have a proposal for you.”
“I’m not taking any more projects. Too busy. Yes, much too busy,” he says without looking up.
“It’s a profitable venture.”
“Money is just coin. It’s only valuable because someone in power told us it is and the general population believes them. All that matters is what coin can buy, and I have everything I need right here.”
“Yes, judging from your appearance, it doesn’t seem you’ve left this workshop in quite some time.”
“I have everything I need right here,” Lars repeats, in the exact tone as previously.
“Is that so? So I suppose you just keep that display case empty because you enjoy the aesthetic?” The Nomad points to an empty display case on the far wall, just over Lars’s workbench.
At this, Lars pauses his work, his tweezers hovering over the insect he’s been picking apart.
The display case on the wall is large enough to make me swallow a lump in my throat. Worse, it’s empty.
I nudge the Nomad in the side, a silent, What are we doing here? He pretends not to notice.
“You know I’m saving that case for something special,” says Lars, sounding genuinely offended.
“Of course I do. So why bother claiming you have everything you need? You know I don’t appreciate being lied to.”
If the Nomad means it as a threat, Lars doesn’t seem to take it that way.
In fact, his grimace appears to be more related to contemplating whether speaking to the Nomad is worth the time he’ll lose on whatever he’s doing currently.
“Are you here to tell me you’ve found one for my collection?
” He turns his monocled eye on me, scanning me up and down, bending not so subtly to try to get a look behind my back.
A shiver snakes down my spine. My feet ready to run, but the Nomad sends a silent shake of his head my way. It’s not the commanding sort, nor is it intimidating. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would think it’s supposed to be comforting.
I must be a fool, because I stay put.
“I’m afraid she’s not for sale,” says the Nomad.
“Then you’re wasting my valuable time,” says Lars, shooing at the Nomad.
“Yes,” drawls the Nomad, looking with disdain on the dissected insect. “I should let you get back to more important matters. But before we leave, I’ll urge you to hear out my proposition.”
Lars doesn’t answer, which must make the Nomad assume is an invitation to continue. “I need your help breaking into a Fate’s lair.”
I wait for Lars to guffaw. To tell the Nomad he’s crazy.
Instead, without looking up from his insect, he says, “Which Sister?”
I raise a brow in surprise, but it’s a fair question. There’s a gradient to the Sisters’ cruelty, though now that I think of it, I don’t know much about the Youngest.
“Does it matter?” asks the Nomad.
“I won’t get on the bad side of the Middle. No, not that one,” he says, shaking his head as if speaking to himself.
The Nomad and I exchange a look, but he shrugs, then says carefully, “Well, then we’re all in luck. It’s the Eldest Sister we intend to steal from.”
“And what are we stealing?”
“We? I like the sound of that.”
“We is hypothetical in this situation.”
“The artifact in particular is of no importance to you. What is important is your payment for helping me retrieve said artifact.”
Lars waves his hand. “I don’t need money. Money’s just…”
“Yes, yes, I know. It’s just coin. Only valuable because someone in power told us so and all except you are fools,” says the Nomad. “Except I don’t intend to pay you in money.”
“You already said you don’t have what I want.”
“Oh, I have what you want,” says the Nomad. “You just can’t add her to your collection.”
Lars looks up once more, his curiosity clearly piqued. He’s not the only one.
“You see, in order to infiltrate the Sister’s lair, one of us will need to fly.”
A tingling sensation courses from my spine through my wings.
“Then get yourself some faerie dust.”
My limbs freeze. The Nomad is going to have this man bloodlet me. Memories of Neverland pierce my flesh, the translucent membrane of my already tattered wings.
I spin on my limbs to run, but the Nomad catches me by the arm. When he leans to whisper in my ear, his voice is soft. “It’s not what you think.”
Before I can struggle further, he says to Lars, “That’s the problem. The team member who will need to fly is immune to faerie dust.”
My heart stops. Winged faeries can’t use faerie dust to fly. Since it comes from our blood, we metabolize it too quickly.
The Nomad wants me to fly again.
And now, instead of memories of Neverland, it’s memories of home bombarding me. Memories of my father teaching me to fly by night, of us whizzing over the ocean, the saltwater spray in my face…
No. No, I gave up those dreams. I’ll never fly again, not after what Peter did to my wings.
When I come back to, Lars is staring at me through his monocle.
“I’d like to examine her before I make my decision.”
I shoot the Nomad a glare, and he simply shrugs. “It’s up to you. But know this, your wings being restored are essential to the plan.”
I weigh my options, then realizing I only have one, grit my teeth, loosen the strap on my overcoat, and allow it to fall to the floor.
My wings stretch, back muscles aching with relief, as I unbind them from around my torso. The tendons stretch out, my wings spreading out behind me.
Lars appears entranced. He crosses the room, hand outstretched the entire way. I’m not wild about how eager he looks to touch me, and I say as much with my expression to the Nomad, who dares look apologetic.
When Lars reaches me, his mouth hanging ajar, he goes for the tattered edges first. I shift, uncomfortably, not because it hurts.
In fact, those pieces of my wings that Peter repeatedly shredded have little feeling left in them.
Lars’s fingertips might as well be touching skin to which ice has been applied for half an hour.
But the last person to touch my wings was Peter, and even though Lars’s touch is clinical, it has my skin crawling all the same.
“Alright, Lars, that’s enough,” says the Nomad, snatching Lars’s wrist.