0449474001339292671 4 fighting faer (14 page)

Corinne found herself fighting back tears and she shook her head in denial. She didn’t want anything to mean this much, especially not sex, but she was afraid she was already much too late. This was more than sex, more than lovemaking. Somehow, when she wasn’t paying attention, it had become
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communion, and she feared she’d never be the same again.

In the end, their climax came upon them together, building like the wave their motions mimicked, drawing them under with a powerful force, then lifting them again to the surface and washing them ashore, clean and new and reborn.

Some people apparently had no respect for rebirth.

At first she thought the pounding was in her head, but when it was accompanied by a shout, she sat bolt upright on the sofa and stared at her front door. It practically vibrated under the force of the fist that pounded against it. Before she could react, Luc shifted her to the side, slid off the sofa and appeared at the door between one breath and the next. In his hand he held a lethal-looking silver dagger and he put his shoulder against the door before he said a word.

“Who is it?” he demanded, voice low and rough and wary.

“Luc, damn it, open the door before I open it myself. It’s Fergus.” Corinne frowned. “Who?”

“Just put on some clothes,” Luc instructed. “Wear my T-shirt.” She pulled the too-large shirt on over her head and was reaching down to grab his jeans to hand to him when he opened the door. “Luc!”

“Luc, it’s about time. I have news.”

Corinne watched, horrified, as Luc opened her front door—stark naked—to admit an enormous, auburn-haired man wearing worn blue jeans, a slate-blue T-shirt and a four-foot broadsword. And his name, apparently, was Fergus.

“What are you doing here?” Luc demanded, seeming totally oblivious that he was still bare-assed and probably reeking of sex. Corinne blushed crimson and threw his jeans at his head, half-wishing they were made of stone. Though from what she’d seen, granite would shatter on impact with something as hard as Luc’s head. He looked at her a little oddly, but obligingly pulled on his jeans.

“Rafe told me where you would be.” Fergus stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind him and ignoring Corinne completely. She wasn’t sure if she was insulted or relieved. “The Queen sent me after you.”

Luc cursed, stalking back toward the sofa to grab his socks and boots. He sat to put them on. “For Lady’s sake, I’ve been here one day. What’s her bloody royal rush?”

“A ripple at the Woodland Door.”

Fascinated, Corinne watched as Luc looked up from concealing his dagger in his boot and gave his friend a disbelieving stare. “That’s impossible.”

“So the Queen thought, but apparently, we’re all mistaken.”

“What’s the Woodland Door, and why was it rippling? And who the hell are you?”
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Both men turned to Corinne and looked surprised. They’d probably forgotten she was there. She glared up at them and wished she were wearing something other than Luc’s enormous T-shirt, even if it did cover her from neck to knees. She’d curled her legs up against her chest so she could pull the hem all the way down to her ankles. It still left her lacking a certain amount of dignity.

Fergus spoke first, after raising his eyebrows and giving her an appraising once-over. “Now, she is not your usual type, friend. A little…ordinary, don’t you think?”

“She’s extraordinary enough to make you eat your teeth if you talk about her like that again,” she growled, eyes narrowing in a violent glare. She had decided she really didn’t like Fergus.

Luc put his arm around her and hugged her to his side, sending Fergus a glare of his own. “Corinne, this is Fergus of Eithdne. He serves as my lieutenant, when he’s not making an ass out of himself. And sometimes when he is.” Fergus didn’t even blink at the insult. He was too busy watching them curiously.

“Fergus, this is Corinne D’Alessandro.”

Fergus looked from Corinne to Luc and back again. “She’s human.” He said it like you might say, “she’s a wooly mammoth,” with a sense of total disbelief, as if checking to make sure Luc had noticed.

“She’s also not deaf, you Fae freak,” she growled, “so you might want to try being civil. Or don’t you guys have manners where you come from?”

Fergus stiffened and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Corinne laughed. “Oh, right. I tell you when you’re being a raving jerk and you reach for the sword.

What happens if I call you an asshole? Do you have a hand grenade in your pocket?” She might have laughed at the way his jaw dropped if she hadn’t been hoping to see it rot off.

He looked at Luc. “She can’t possibly see my sword. I charmed it before I left Rafe’s. It’s under illusion.”

“Not a very good one, I guess, because I can see it as clear as day,” she informed him before Luc could open his mouth. “I can see right through you. Which is why I can see what a jerk you are.” Fergus frowned. “Can you see this?”

He waved his hand around for a second before he opened his closed fist to reveal a perfectly formed flower resting in the palm of his hand. Corinne frowned. “Yeah, it’s an orchid. So what?” The Fae ignored her question and turned to Luc. “That’s impossible,” he said in the sort of tone that brooked no argument. “There’s only one reason she would be able to see through the masking glamour on my sword, but not notice anything odd about a simple creation spell, but it’s impossible. She’s human.

She can’t possibly be your hea—”

“She doesn’t know what she is, Fergus, and I don’t have time to explain it to her now,” Luc interrupted, giving Fergus a meaningful stare. “So why don’t you let it go for now and tell me what you know about the Door.”

The other Fae nodded briefly and took a seat on the edge of an armchair. “Right. Mab sent me because
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she detected—”

“Um, hello?” Corinne interrupted, struggling very hard to resist grabbing them both by their hair and ramming their heads together as hard as she could. Maybe it would knock some sense into one or the other. “Person here who doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What is the Woodland Door?” Fergus glared at her, so she glared right back, but Luc turned to answer her question. “Remember those old doors between Ithir and Faerie that I told you about earlier? The ones that the Queen had closed and sealed?” She nodded. “The Woodland Door is one of those. It’s been sealed for centuries, but at one time it led from a forest here on this island to a forest in Faerie. That’s how it got its name.”

“A forest in Manhattan?”

“Well, it used to be in a forest. Now it’s in a section of lawn in Central Park.” Corinne groaned. “Of course it is.” She had recently learned that Central Park was practically a hotbed of Other activity. Between Faerie doors and werewolf pack meetings, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to set foot in the Park again. She almost longed for the days when the weirdest things going on in there were protest rallies and creative flashers.

“Can I go on now?”

She rolled her eyes at Fergus’s petulant tone, but Luc just nodded.

“Fine. So as I was saying…” He paused to glare at Corinne. She smiled sweetly, just because she knew it would drive him crazy. It did. “Last night, after you had left, we stationed extra Guards in the Chamber of Doors. Everything seemed normal until around midnight, when Connor and Ewen said they felt a disturbance in the air. They alerted me, and I sent for the Queen.”

“What did she find?” Luc asked.

“At first nothing, and she was less than pleased. I thought she was going to banish all three of us to bogle duty for a century or more. But then it happened again, and this time we all felt it. An Undoing charm.”

“That shouldn’t do a thing, though. Mab made sure her seals couldn’t be undone by something that simple.”

“I know,” Fergus nodded, “but then we felt a Passing charm cast, and that’s when the Queen got nervous.”

Luc scowled. “That would still never be enough to open a sealed door.”

“No, but it could open a hidden one. And after the ripples stopped at the Woodland Door, he tried the Hearthstone Door as well.”

Luc’s only response was a curse, and this time even Corinne thought she understood what he had to swear about. If she understood correctly, what Fergus had just told them was that Seoc had discovered the way to open the hidden door between Faerie and Ithir, and the only thing keeping him from wreaking all the havoc Luc had described was that he hadn’t yet found it.

“Okay, I admit that sounds like it sucks,” she ventured, wrapping her arms around her knees. “But it’s
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not like he’s already done the deed. Why can’t we just go to where the real door is and wait for him to show up? I mean, if he’s trying all the doors he knows about in turn, he’ll get to the right one eventually, but we just need to get there first.”

“If it were that easy,” Fergus snapped, “don’t you think we would already be there?” Corinne jerked back, feeling like she’d been slapped. She had never been one to count solely on first impressions, but so far all of her impressions of Fergus told her he was a creep. She snarled at him.

“Listen, freak boy—”

“Stop it,” Luc growled. “I don’t have time to listen to you two squabble.” Fergus subsided under a Captain of the Guard glare, and Corinne shut up when Luc turned a similar expression on her. “The idea is a good one, Corinne, but the problem is that we don’t know where the real door is hidden.” She blinked. “Well, that’s stupid. How is anyone ever supposed to use a door they can’t find?”

“They aren’t. They’re supposed to ask the Queen for passage, and she sends them through and conceals the location of the door.”

“How? You’d have to be pretty stupid not to be able to find the location of a door you just walked through.”

“Yeah. Or pretty human.”

“Fergus. Shut. Up.” Luc spared a glare at the other Fae before turning back to Corinne. “If Faerie doors worked like physical doors, you’d be right. But they don’t. A Faerie door isn’t a door at all. It works entirely differently, because it isn’t usually fixed to any one spot. Mab fixed the doors on the Faerie side because she always wanted to see who came into or left her realm, but on this side, she wanted to make them difficult to find, so she charmed them to open in random locations unless she specifically requested otherwise.”

Corinne shook her head. “Do I detect a hint of paranoia? Still, I suppose we’re lucky she was so worried, since it’s kept Seoc from finding the right door yet.”

“Yes, but he’s had a lot more time to look than we have now,” Luc said, getting to his feet with a grim expression. “If we want to get to the door first, we need to find out from the Queen where it is.”

“And how do we do that?” Corinne asked. “I don’t suppose she’s got a cell phone.” He shook his head. “No, but then, we don’t need a phone to contact her. Before we do, I want to talk to the head of the Council. I have a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can get if we plan to spring a trap for Seoc.”

“Okay, that’s great.” She shook her head. “Who is the head of the council?” He looked at her in surprise. “Rafael De Santos. Before him, it was Dmitri Vidâme. I thought you were friends with Regina. Shouldn’t you know these things?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, supernatural politics really isn’t my schtick. I didn’t even know anyone in, er…Ithir knew Faerie existed before yesterday. How was I supposed to know there was some sort of official ambassador?”

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“Someone has to maintain diplomatic ties between the worlds. On Ithir, it’s the responsibility of the head of the Council.”

“Right. Great. Looks like we go talk to Rafe then. Just give me five minutes.”

“What for?”

She was already heading for the bedroom. “So I can get dressed.” She heard him sigh. “All right. I’m going to call Rafe and tell him we’re on our way.”

“What makes you think we plan to take a human along with us?” Even if she’d been deaf, Corinne couldn’t have missed the sarcastic, arrogant tone in Fergus’s voice.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll just follow you,” she explained. “And then I’ll get all pissy, I’ll bitch about you to Reggie and Missy,
they’ll
bitch about you to Misha and Graham, and then there’ll be this whole big inter-dimensional incident just because you got your shorts in a knot.” She stopped in the hallway door and looked over her shoulder at him. “So do you really want to go there? I didn’t think so.” She stalked back into her bedroom to the sound of Luc’s chuckle and Fergus’s curses in a language she didn’t recognize. It was just as well. They would probably just have pissed her off even more. And she was already planning to stash a metric buttload of aspirin in her backpack to take with her. Judging by the size of the headache Fergus had given her, that might spare him from her wrath for about an hour.

Two, if he’d learn to keep his mouth shut. It amazed her that one Fae could be so obnoxious and set her teeth on edge in a nano-second, while the another—Luc—could give her that scary, happy, glowing feeling in her chest. She must have lost her mind.

As she pulled a pair of beat up denim shorts out of her dresser drawer, she heard Fergus yell something impatient and rude from her living room. Eyes narrowing, she decided to make it two metric buttloads of aspirin. Just in case.

Five minutes, Corinne decided as she climbed out of the cab she and her two enormous companions has squeezed into for the trip to Rafe’s Upper East Side home. That’s all she needed, just five minutes of peace, of uninterrupted privacy where she could sit down, take a deep breath to try to figure out just what the hell was going on and when exactly she’d gotten on this ride that wouldn’t stop. Was it really so much to ask?