A Lonely Magic (12 page)

“Wait.” Fen tried again to protest. No way could that be safe. But she could feel the kite tugging at her, trying to lift her off her feet. “Luke!” She didn’t wail, not quite.

He lifted her hands and placed them on the metal frame of the glider. “Hang on here. Don’t let go.”

Fen clutched the chill metal with all her strength, her palms already sweating. “This is a bad idea.”

“Eladio,” Luke replied simply.

Fen would have kicked him if he hadn’t been moving to stand behind her. He put his hands next to hers on the frame, leaning down to do so. She could feel his breath on her ear, his warmth a solid presence against her back.

“Oh, God. I think I’m scared of heights,” Fen said.

“Close your eyes.”

“I’m definitely scared of heights.” Fen stared at the city below. It was gorgeous. So beautiful. So far away. And how could she have not known how scary heights were before? In her list of fears, it had never even cracked the top ten. Death, starvation, pimps, spiders, not having anything to read when the El broke down… yeah, no, heights hadn’t been on her radar.

Not until now, anyway.

Luke jumped, pushing both of them off the ground and into the sky.

Fen squeezed her eyes closed and whimpered.

But the air rushing past her face and body felt glorious. The sensation of weightlessness, of soaring, of gliding through the sky…

Fen opened her eyes.

The city sprawled out before her. It was beautiful. Like something out of a dream.

A really good dream, the kind where you didn’t want to wake up, not now, not ever.

“Oh, my God,” she said, but this time the words were reverent, awed.

Luke laughed in her ear, his breath warm against her skin. “Fun, yes?”

The city was alive with movement and life, noise and activity. Buildings as rounded as castles, as spiked and ledged as coral, were layered with open balconies and gardens. Gliders skimmed through the air, vehicles moved along wide streets and canals, people hurried along pedestrian bridges high above the ground. It smelled of honey and roses and fried chicken, spicy and sweet and lived-in, all in the same breath. It sounded of bells and splashing water and the chaos of humanity.

And she was flying above it.

Fen’s hands tightened on the frame. Why weren’t they crashing to the ground? The glider took a sudden dip, almost a nose dive, and she yelped.

Luke yelped, too. “Don’t do that.”

The glider stabilized, sailing smoothly along a canal that curved and flowed like a river, as Fen asked, “Do what?”

“Think so loud,” Luke answered. “Or if you must, think about my mother’s house.”

“I don’t know anything about your mother’s house.” And then Fen’s mouth dropped open. They were passing over a plaza of sorts, sprinkled with tiny lights, like over-the-top, cover-the-entire-house holiday decorations, but the music that rose from it sounded like a chorus of dark angels, male voices in a harmony of searing grief.

The glider dipped precariously again, heading down at a steep angle as Fen demanded, “What is that?”

“Stop, stop.” Luke slid his hand against hers on the frame of the glider. His voice held an edge as he ordered, “Think home if you must keep thinking.”

Fen thought home.

She thought of her apartment in Chicago. She thought of the bookstore. She thought of the last house she’d lived in with her mom, two bedrooms and a chainlink fence around the back yard. And the one before that, no fence but the kitchen floor with that weird squashy spot that reminded her of quicksand, and the one before that, an apartment with neighbors upstairs whose television was always on, always loud.

The glider lurched, up, up, up and Luke gasped. “Stop thinking, stop thinking!”

Obediently, Fen stopped thinking, but the glider wobbled in the air, swaying from side-to-side.

“What’s happening?”

“Let go of the glider,” Luke said, sounding frantic.

Instinctively, Fen’s hands clenched harder. Let go? Not a chance.

The glider bounced and began climbing again.

“Fen, you’re confusing it,” Luke yelled. “Let go!”

“I’m not doing anything!”

The glider began turning in circles, big swooping circles, climbing higher and higher.

“It’s trying to take you home.”

Home? That sounded good to Fen.

The familiar, the comfortable, the safety behind her locked door.

Home.

That was where she wanted to be, wasn’t it?

Was it?

She looked down at the city already much farther below them. That plaza. That music. She wanted to know what it was. And this place was amazing. Maybe she wasn’t ready to go home quite yet.

The glider evened out.

“Oh, goddess,” Luke muttered. His hand brushed against hers again. “This was a bad idea.”

Fen refrained from saying she’d told him so. Instead, she formed a thought in her head.
Luke’s house, please.

The glider seemed delighted to obey. With one last bounce, it swooped down upon the city.

Holy shit.

Luke’s sigh of relief tickled Fen’s ear.

She glanced up at the underside of the glider. “It reads my mind because I’m holding on to it?”

“Something like that,” Luke said.

“Telepathic public transportation. I love it.”

“It’s not public,” Luke said.

But Fen wasn’t paying attention. The city had her enraptured. The plants clinging to one building flowered in gigantic red spiky blooms that reminded her of a Dr. Seuss book. The next building had a glass roof that revealed tiny glittering flying creatures inside. Birds or butterflies? She couldn’t be sure. The glider veered around a jade-green pillar glowing with an eerie light, under an arched bridge, past a fountain spraying water sideways into a pool of mirrors, until—after more time and less time than she could count—the glider slowed above a terraced garden. It began to settle to the ground, hovering at ten feet up, then nine, then eight.

Luke cursed under his breath.

Fen barely noticed. The trees were covered in white flowers that gave off the most amazing scent, like nothing she had ever smelled before. If a smell could be warm, that’s how it smelled. Warm and light and lovely. The garden itself was lit by torches, fluttering flames scattered around the grounds.

Luke called out something, his voice urgent but his words incomprehensible, before letting go of the glider and dropping to the ground.

Fen looked down. Three men stepped out of the shadows under the trees and waited, the first in front, arms crossed, the other two behind him, hands near their hips.

Oh, hell. She recognized that look. It was unmistakable.

Apparently Atlantis—or wherever the hell this place was—had cops, too.

And these cops were clearly not real happy.

Fen licked her lips. No place to run. No way to slink to the back of the room and disappear without being noticed. The glider steadily lowered her to the ground.

She hadn’t done anything, she reminded herself.

But when had that ever bothered a cop? Back in the day, she attracted their attention like flies to dead meat. She knew why, of course. She looked like a kid. She looked fragile and young and delicate, someone who should be dragged off the street by brute force if necessary.

Assholes.

Luke was talking, words spilling out like lyrics to a rap song, too fast, too unexpected for Fen to understand what he was saying. Boss Cop barked back at him, his words equally meaningless.

Of course, Fen realized. They don’t speak English in Neither-Faerieland-Nor-Atlantis. 

That was gonna suck.

As her feet brushed the ground, she fumbled with the straps around her chest. She couldn’t see how they fastened.
Let go
? she thought at the glider.

The straps released. With a sigh of relief, Fen slipped out of the harness.
Thank you
.

The glider bobbed at her and swooped off into the sky.

Fen stepped up next to Luke. Boss Cop was pointing at her and yelling, glaring at Luke. “What’s he saying?” she whispered. She still thought he was a cop, but he sure didn’t look like the cops back home. Tall, head shaved to sleek stubble, he wore a short, sleeveless black tunic and leggings. His arms were muscled and covered with tattoos, intricate patterns of color and darkness, while a simpler red and black tattoo twined its way along his cheek.

Luke put a hand on her shoulder but didn’t answer her. He extended the other hand to the cops, palm up, as he responded to them in words she couldn’t understand.

Boss Cop shouted some more. His sidekicks stepped around him to the sides and advanced on Luke and Fen. In the flickering light of the torches, Fen could see they were dressed similarly to the first, only in red, the tattoos on their face red lines.

“Okay, this doesn’t look good.” Fen stepped back involuntarily.

The cops paused.

“Fen, I am so sorry,” Luke said. He turned back to the tattooed men and rattled off another long string of indecipherable words.

“And that doesn’t sound good,” Fen snapped at him, feeling the panic rising in her chest. “What the hell is going on, Luke?”

“I shouldn’t have let you touch the glider controls,” Luke said, sounding miserable. “I thought it would be more comfortable for you and I didn’t realize you might be strong enough to override my signal. It was stupid of me.”

“Okay. And?” Fen asked, eyes on the two men. They were younger than the boss cop. Their hands were empty but she could tell from the way they stood—the poised balance, the coiled energy—that the lack of weapons meant nothing.

They were weapons.

“The system reported an unlicensed user. The guards awaited us here once our destination was recognized.”

Guards, not cops. Did it matter or were they the same thing? Fen swallowed, her mouth feeling dry. “It’s your mother’s house, isn’t it? You’re allowed to be here.”

The guards were glancing at one another, not as if they were uncertain but as if they were exchanging information, and Fen slid closer to Luke.

“Yes, but…” Luke paused. In a voice that seemed overly careful, he said, “We’ve broken more than one law.”

“So pay the ticket and let’s get moving,” Fen said. “Eladio, remember?”

“It is not so easy.” Luke put both hands up, spreading his fingers wide, and said a few short, sharp words to the guards.

Boss cop sounded grim but he wasn’t yelling anymore as he responded with several sentences of his own, before nodding and waving a hand at the others. They fell back a couple of steps but their level of alertness didn’t change.

Luke took her hand and tucked it over his arm. “Come.”

“Why isn’t it easy, Luke?” Fen insisted, not moving. Maybe it was buttons being pushed or triggers being pulled, old memories stirring in her brain, old instincts kicking in. Maybe it was intuition. Hell, call it spidey-sense. But Fen had a sinking feeling she knew how this scene was going to play out and she didn’t like it much. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” He kept his voice low. “You’re an air-dweller.”

“Which means what, exactly?” She let her eyes slip off the guards so she could look at Luke. “You’re breathing air, too, you know.”

“Yes, but… it’s not the same. It is strictly forbidden to tell air-dwellers anything of our refuges. Bringing one inside is—well, unthinkable.” He tugged her into motion and Fen didn’t resist.

She was screwed. Flat-out screwed. The glider was gone, no way to get it back. No way to run, no way to hide. She’d followed Luke down the rabbit hole and Wonderland objected.

“So what’s the deal?” They passed the two guards who fell into step behind them. The back of Fen’s neck itched with paranoia.

“I have to help Eladio. They’re going to let me go, to summon reinforcements in aid of Caye Laje. And they will keep you safe until I return. After that… we’ll see.”

Fen choked down a laugh, but it held no humor.

Safe.

She’d heard that before. Sure, her cop magnetism had gotten her out of bad situations a couple of times. But the so-called safe places they took her to were never all that safe. Twelve hours in a jail cell with a junkie with dead eyes, a group home with an creep who only understood “no” when it came with a broken pinky, the hellhole of a foster family where food was rationed like a prison camp and hungry kids would lie, steal, and backstab to get theirs…

Oh, she knew safe.

Fuck this shit.

But there was nothing she could do about it, so she gritted her teeth and kept her mouth closed and followed silently.

Unfortunate

Safe.

Yeah, she was safe.

Holy fuck, she was safe.

Also bored out of her mind.

Supine on the floor, Fen stared at the blank ceiling and tried to remember a quotation from
Romeo and Juliet
.

Not a specific quotation, just a quote. Any quote. Balcony scene?
What light, something-something
. But that was all she could come up with. She’d read the damn thing only a few days ago. Shouldn’t she remember at least a few lines?

She lifted one leg into the air and kept it poised above her, perpendicular to the ground. Yoga. Wasn’t this posture a yoga thing? She’d learn yoga. Or, rather, independently develop a new form of yoga since she had no idea how yoga worked and she had no way of learning it in here.