Chapter Ten
A few days of unsuccessful attempts and Kingston was prepared to give up on the current methods.
Graves practically kicked his feet as he watched Kingston’s failures. “You know we learned our magic over years, Kingston. You shouldn’t expect her to get it in a day.”
“We’re going about this wrong,” Kingston said. He leaned heavier on his cane and stamped it onto the wood as he thought.
Kierse leaned on her knees with a pant. The constant portal attempts made her magic stutter and her energy lag. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”
Kingston waved his hand.
“Let me translate,” Graves said. “He doesn’t remember.”
“I have an impeccable memory.” Kingston pointed the cane at him. “I remember that time that you struggled with your secondary powers and got caught working with gunpowder to test your noise distortion.”
Graves winced. “Sometimes I hate that you’ve known me this long.”
“I need this whole story,” Kierse said with a laugh.
“He blew up a whole building!”
“I owned the building,” Graves argued. “It didn’t matter.”
“He fumbled the magic, and people heard it for miles instead of silencing it.”
Kierse put her hand to her mouth. She couldn’t imagine that version of Graves. Someone still training his abilities and fumbling through them rather than so utterly confident in every aspect of his life.
“So what happened?”
“Nothing!” Kingston said. “I persuaded the police that it was an accident, and they simply forgot to charge anyone. He was lucky I was around.”
“I could have gotten out of it just fine.”
“Perhaps, but my methods are quicker. You couldn’t have erased all their memories at once.” Kingston glanced between them with a wince. “She does know that you do more than read people, yes?”
“I do.”
“Erasing memories is an inelegant solution, and I avoid it at all costs,” Graves said stiffly.
Which was what he had told Kierse when she had learned about his ability to do it while working through her memories. He had erased Emilie’s memories of her soulmate, and inevitably it had killed her. A mistake that he was trying not to make a second time.
“That isn’t exactly how I remember it,” Kingston said under his breath.
Graves shot him another murderous look, but they honestly didn’t work on Kingston. He raised a toast to him and kept right on talking.
“Let’s take a step back,” Kingston said. “How did you first discover that you could portal? Where were you? Where did you portal?”
Kierse glanced to Graves. They couldn’t tell him that it was because of the cauldron or that she had the powers because of her Fae abilities.
But she hadn’t actually confided in Graves that she had portaled once before.
He tilted his head to the side as if he read her, even though that was utterly impossible right now. But he knew her well enough to see that she had been keeping something.
She sighed. “About a month ago, I was being followed through the streets. I was on Sixth Avenue, and it was congested, but I could feel that I was being followed. I kept trying to avoid them, but it didn’t work.
I used all of my stealth moves from when I was full-time thieving.
No go. And so…I don’t know…I just jumped. ”
Graves’s eyes were guarded by the end of her story. He knew exactly who followed her—Lorcan. That day she had been alone, pickpocketing tourists through the busy intersections, and she had felt him through the bond until it drove her mad.
“Do you mean you portaled without a door?”
“No. There was a door like yours. I didn’t draw it or anything. I wanted to get away, and I knew that there was a place at Sixth and a Half Avenue that would do the trick.”
“Sixth and a Half?” Kingston asked.
“It’s a pedestrian walk between Sixth and Seventh for a handful of blocks through the busiest part of Midtown. I’ll take you next time.”
“Excellent.”
“So yeah. I thought about going there, and then the next step through was to that spot. I evaded the person following me.”
“Hmm,” Kingston said. “Do your powers usually react to danger?”
She laughed. “I’m a thief. It’s common territory.”
“You are not going to put her in danger for this,” Graves argued immediately.
“What? You think I need to be in danger to manifest my powers?”
Kingston grinned. “It’s worth a try.”
…
Kierse stared down at the tube platform for Marble Arch on the Central Line and heard the disembodied voice say, “Mind the gap,” for the third time since they arrived at the station.
“This may be the most reckless thing I’ve ever considered doing,” Kierse said. “Jason pushed me off a roof once. I’ve gotten arrested so I could break myself out of prison. I robbed Graves.”
“The last one is quite humorous, though,” Kingston said.
Graves shook his head. “We’re not doing this.”
“We tried to throw knives at her, but you’re too good of a shot,” Kingston said. “She didn’t even flinch.”
“I wasn’t in any real danger.”
“See?” Kingston said.
Graves narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re playing with her life.”
The train rolled past, but they came as frequently as they did in the subway back home.
So another would roll in within a few minutes.
They’d waited to try this after exhausting their other options, and it was late enough that the platform was empty.
Kingston’s persuasion had redirected anyone who came near them.
Very handy. She’d almost asked him how it worked a few times, but she was too worried about him discovering their secret.
“She’ll be fine,” Kingston said.
Then without another word, he shoved directly between Kierse’s shoulders. She dropped hard onto the train tracks and continued her momentum forward through a roll before coming back to her feet. She glanced up at the platform to see that Graves had Kingston lifted up by his collar.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Graves pushed his mentor aside and rushed to the side of the platform. He held his hand out. “Let me help you up.”
“I can do this.”
“Kierse…”
“I can do this,” she repeated. “Let me try at least.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “This is madness.”
Kierse focused her attention on the task at hand. The jitters of adrenaline fed her body and seemed to take over. She drew her door. That part at least seemed to be coming easier. It was the door to the attic.
She had lived with Gen and Ethan in an attic of Colette’s brothel for years until she’d moved in with Graves.
That had been home for so long that it still seemed to be the door that she drew when she thought of one.
They had other lives now, and things were moving at a much faster pace, but they were still family.
And she looked forward to seeing them when she returned home.
The sound of the train coming down the tracks made her hands shake, and the ground beneath her trembled from the approach.
She envisioned where she wanted to go. Just to the platform next to Graves.
She imagined Graves as he was and where he stood currently.
He was her new home, and she could get to him.
“Kingston!” Graves snarled as the lights of the train brightened on her.
She panicked, reaching for the door.
It dissolved into smoke as it had all afternoon.
The horn blared as it barreled down the tracks.
Kierse looked up once as sweat beaded on her brow and fear peaked within her. She didn’t have access to her time manipulation, and she couldn’t make the train stop so she could escape the tracks.
This was the worst thing she had ever done. She would die on these tracks. She would die right here.
“Kingston!” Graves yelled again. “Do something!”
Then Graves was there, holding his hand out.
And she hated herself when she took his hand and let him haul her out of the way at the last moment.
They both sprawled out onto the concrete floor of the tube, breathless and shaking. Kierse lay with her back on the disgusting ground and her eyes trained on the ceiling as she let her terror finally dissolve.
“Maybe not that again,” she said, checking her ears again before pushing herself up. “Might be too dangerous even for me.”
Kingston laughed at the pair of them on the ground. “I had a portal open behind you. I was going to scoop you up if it didn’t work.”
Graves glared at him. “Maybe a warning next time.”
“Well, it wouldn’t have worked if you’d known.”
“I don’t think it worked,” Kierse said.
“I suppose not,” Kingston agreed as he offered her a hand. She took it, coming back to shaky feet. “Well, more practice. Stay with me a few weeks and we’ll figure it out.”
“We can’t,” Graves said as he dusted himself off. “We have to prepare for the convocation.”
“I’m coming back for that. You could stay until Halloween and then go to New York with me.”
“The city is too volatile. The Men of Valor have taken over the trolls and effectively own the subway system. They’re drawing lines across my city, and they’re recruiting,” Graves said with distaste. “I couldn’t leave it that long. We’ll have to practice at home.”
Not that they could stay at Kingston’s until Halloween. It was one thing to get it by him that she was Fae for a few days. But he’d surely notice her ears, if not the mechanics of her magic, if they were here longer than that.
Even though she would have loved to avoid the bond for that long.
“Fine. Fine,” Kingston said as he gestured for them to head back out of the tube. “You need to take back control of your city, but the convocation is a good thing.”
“The monsters killed Nate,” Kierse argued. “They aren’t going to listen to anyone else if they’re willing to kill an elected representative.”
“That was unnecessary, but monsters should be allowed to rule themselves.”
“They did that, and it resulted in a ten-year war. I’ll avoid it again if I can,” Graves said.
“Yes, but you care about the humans.”
Graves shrugged. “I care about the health of my city. Humans live in it as much as the monsters.”
“That is where you and I have always differed.” They walked along the park and back toward Kingston’s home even though he could have easily portaled them over there if he wanted.
“Humans are a lesser species. It is why my company remains with monsters. All the rest who get in my way,” he waved his hand, “matter little.”
“I find most monsters more irritating than most humans.”
“You find most people irritating—monster or otherwise,” Kingston said on a laugh. “Well, until this one.”
Kierse shrugged. “I thought I was human a long time. I don’t want them to suffer.”
“Give it a few hundred years, girl, and you’ll think differently.”
“If a few hundred years is going to burn out my empathy for others, then I don’t want it. If I can keep other people from suffering the way I grew up, that would be for the better.”
Kingston laughed. “A revolutionary if I’ve ever heard one. Well, we’ll see what the convocation says. They’ll know what’s best—monster rights, human rights. All of that.”
Kingston opened the door to his house and helped them inside.
“This is where we leave you,” Graves said.
Kingston sighed. “I had a feeling you’d say that.” He waved his hand, and suddenly a door appeared outside of his house. “All right, Raven. It was a pleasure as always.” He bent over Kierse’s hand and pressed a kiss to it. “Miss McKenna.”
They said their goodbyes and then stepped through directly to the front door of Graves’s brownstone on the Upper West Side in New York City.
Home.