Breaking Ties (19 page)

I pick up the staff and whisper my heavily accented Sigil to it. “
Collapse.
”

Almost immediately the length of metal turns, snapping and clacking loudly, as the opposite ends of it recede toward the center and leave it about a foot in length. I clip it by the crown to my belt, for easy transport.

Took me three
weeks
to figure that out, and I still can't believe I pulled it off. And to think that the Coyote's impressed by a shotgun that shoots lightning bolts. Adorable.

“Let's see a Coyote make something like this.” I appraise it one more time. I'm pretty sure James'll like it. I went for something similar to what his D&D character, Radcliffe, has. Hell, maybe after this our characters can finally get together in the game too.

After leaving and locking up, I hail a cab, given that the sidhe wrecked my car, not my bank account, and head out to Allora.

At least the Coyote's getting help from his father. Maybe it's a little embarrassing for your father to come and save you, but given his captors, hopefully Spencer won't hold it against me, and he'll understand that I needed to get to James a-s-a-damned-p.

And I'm going to.

All I need to do is find a dragon at a nightclub full of mythics.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Spencer

December 20, 4:09 pm

So this sucks.

Seriously, I know that the sidekick is supposed to end up in situations like this so the hero can bust down the door and save him all, well,
heroically
, but I never thought to consider how rough it is for the guy being saved.

“So, what, you're just giving up?”

And now, for some reason, James is in front of me.

Okay…

“You're dreaming, Spence. You fell asleep.”

Then why am I still in a vent—

Nope, I'm on a couch and I'm human. James and I are in the living room of what looks like a modest apartment that's sparsely decorated with Salvation Army chic furniture, with the exception of a sixty-four-inch flat screen in front of us, where an episode of
Spaced
is currently playing. My head is also in the sorcerer's lap, and he's gently stroking my hair.

“I still can't believe you've never seen this.” I chuckle to myself, looking up at him. “The entire series can be watched in an afternoon.”

“Spence. Focus.” He runs his fingertip along the edge of my ear. I decide I like that. “So this is how you see you and me, huh?”

“First, are you here? I mean, I don't know if you're trying to send me a message through my—”

“I'm part of the dream, Spence. This is apparently what you want. You really think you love me, don't you?”

I get up for that. “Well, yeah.”

“And you think you'll just tell me and…” he motions to the room, “…what, this will happen? I've got a boyfriend, Spencer. Remember him? The guy who slugged you in the stomach?”

I shrug. “This is my dream, can't you let me enjoy this?”

“I'm just surprised that this is all you want. No tricks, just lying on a couch and watching TV with me. You haven't even had a sex dream about me, for God's sake.”

And suddenly the two of us are in bed. I'm naked, but he's strangely not.

“You've never seen me naked so there's no frame of reference.”

I lean over to kiss him, and while my lips press to his, he does nothing. When I pull back, feeling a little cross, he rolls his eyes again.

“You don't know how I kiss either, Spence. Now are we going to talk about how to get you out of your mess or what?”

“With you and Ozzie?”

He grumbles, forcefully exhales. “With the
vent
. You know, the thing you're trapped in right now?”

“I don't see any options. I'm stuck and the way forward is blocked.”

“Use one of your tricks. Bark
Sora
at the wall or something.”

“I don't have any cards.”

“So imagine the card in your head.”

I give him a look. “I'm not a sorcerer, James, I can't do that. Well, I
did
once, but I had a magic battery that'll let anyone do magic, and I doubt there's one sitting around in here. I'm apparently supposed to just wait for you, well, the real you, to come and save me.”

“How? You're chained to Fate and I'm off their radar. How are those ladies supposed to lead me to you? Besides, don't you remember that you were looking for
me
when all this happened? You're going to have to save yourself. Blind luck is not going to lead a savior to you.”

“I seriously have to get you to watch more movies. Then you'd realize how wrong that statement is.”

“Spence, you know me, right?”

I shrug. “Not as well as I'd like to.” I waggle my eyebrows, but he ignores it.

“Spence, you saved
me
. In the bus station. But after that I became a different person, stronger, independent, a little scarier, maybe a little brooding—”

“A
little
? You're practically a Joss Whedon protagonist.”

“Not everyone knows who that is, you know. My point is that I took down Heath myself. I took down the Usurper myself. Hell, I'll probably take care of this dragon problem myself.”

“And the point is?”

He meets my eyes. “Why would I waste my time on someone who always needs saving?” He gets out of the bed, heading toward a door that's now there. “You want to earn a run at me if Ozzie and I don't work out? Get off your ass and save yourself. Since when does the comedy sidekick end up with the hero?”

I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

“What went through your head when you had to admit to Rourke that you didn't love him?”

I close my eyes. “This isn't TV. It's my life.” I take a breath. “I wanted to be the kind of guy who could deserve you, be something more than your friend. I…I love you. And I want to fight for you.”

When I open my eyes there's only darkness, so I imagine a deck of cards—aces, kings, and queens; hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs—spinning in front of me, vanishing one at a time until only a single card remains: the Joker.

In that moment I forget that I'm a coyote, that I'm cramped in a vent, that it's dark, cold and scary. In that moment there is only me and the card. The word slips over my tongue.

“
Sora.
”

I want out. Now.

The lights are off down in the halls, and here in the darkness nothing is certain without a truthful light shining on it, pulling back the curtain to expose the trick. Here in the dark, the curtain is never pulled.

The trick can be
anything
.

But let's keep it simple.

The vent is closed, but this building is old, damp, and the panel might not fit right, the hinges could be rusted, a thousand things could be wrong with that hatch. Only a single curse has to stick.

I hear a creak, then a loud clatter behind me.

Or, a few dozen stick. When you shotgun curses, sometimes you hit
really
well.

I shimmy backwards, slowly progressing, but eventually my legs find the opening. It's a steep fall, but…

I hear another clatter below me. Those boxes
were
stacked pretty badly. What's to say they didn't fall over on their own? And since they were full of clothes, they make something a lot softer to land on than concrete. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that the human traded places with the coyote on the way down, either.

I'm still on a bit of a buzz when I clamber out of the pile of thrift-shop chic for the nouveau riche. I feel warm and sore all over, but I'm free and alive and human again and…

And fuck, how did I
do
that? That was seriously some heavy-duty targeted cursing there. Nice to know that Fate still has my back, even when I'm in a jam like this. Guess those ladies dig the proactive type.

“Don't congratulate yourself too soon, Spence. You're still in the same jam you were in when you woke up here.”

I paw, not literally, around for a light switch or pull chain, but no luck. Instead, since I at least can guess which way the “door” at the end of the passage is, I lean against the wall to guide me until I reach the stairs and the door. A quick curse takes care of the lock, and I open it to find…

The same brick wall.

“Damn it.” I don't touch the wall yet, though. “Okay. They locked the door. There wouldn't be a point to that if there wasn't already a way through.” Actually, throwing me off would be the point to it, but I quickly shove that thought aside. Saving your own ass leaves no room for uncertainty.

“Okay…brick wall. But they can get in and out, obviously, since that smug bastard isn't still down here.” I tap along the wall, it's the regular kind of brick, with mortar and everything, but it does feel a little off on the left side. It's not like there's a door-shaped outline or anything. “On TV, there'd be a secret passage, but…”

But they're pretty smart. This is an oubliette (which isn't worth as much in Scrabble as you'd think), and it's one made by Fae. Fae wouldn't make leaving a simple matter of pushing a loose brick and dancing out the door to Motown's greatest hits. No, it'd have to be easy to leave, but only for
Fae
.

Sigil.

Outside of sorcerers, no one really speaks Sigil. Well, Bards do, but that's likely why they stuffed me into an air vent instead of keeping me locked up.

But now that I'm out, I can speak Sigil with impunity.

So I'll get the door open…and then what?

Well, given that I've pulled a card trick without needing an actual card…

For an odd reason, I think of Shiko.

She's the one I filched the card trick from, in exchange for keeping a pretty big secret that, no, I'm not going to share. What I will share is that Kitsune know exactly what they're doing in the bedroom, and since I'm bi, I really don't care what their biological gender is. I'll also share that she mentioned afterward, over noodles, that I was almost as good a lay as my dad.

It was weeks before I could even think about sex again.

Damn Foxes.

It's common knowledge that the Foxes are wannabe Keth. But they're tricksters, just like us Coyotes, and what occurred to me, pretty much while Shiko was on top of me, was that
that
was the trick. That was the trick that Kitsune learned from their Emerald. They learned to trick reality itself into thinking they were Keth, just long enough to work magic.

So if I filched that trick from the Foxes…why can't I do that?

I don't have to be right. I just have to believe it long enough.

It's dark. They brought me down here, I still had my clothes. I never leave home without my cards…

Well, actually, I didn't have them when the car crashed—

No.
I
never
leave home without my cards.
Ever.

“
Sora.
” So they would be right in my pocket. I reach down and feel the bulge in my back pocket, but it's bigger than I remember. I fish out a thick deck of cards. My Tarot cards.

Then I throw up.

Luckily, I don't do it on the cards; it's kinda nasty. This is likely Fate's little way of letting me know that she's not cool with her favored children coloring outside the lines. But I don't really see a lot of options here if I want to escape.

The whole point to getting my cards is that, that's how the Kitsune's tricks work, only they use strips of paper while I've got my fifty-two assistants. Thing is, Tarot cards are based on playing cards, or maybe the other way around, but now I've got the entire major arcana to work with, as well as the regular stuff.

So I shuffle through and pull out a card, because that's the way things work, and with a blind draw, I'll believe I pulled the right one, because I
need
to have pulled the right one.

“
The Sun—
Holy fuck, that's too damned bright!” Seriously, the whole place is lit up like, well, a sunny day, the card practically burning with light. I stuff it back in the deck, the light then extinguished. Thank God for small favors, right?

I pull another card. “
The Moon.
”

Much better, though all it does is make me think of Selah, who tried to pass herself off as a moon goddess to swindle poor, innocent Coyotes into doing her bidding, and to make sure they never had a decent relationship. At least I can finally see. Well, sort of, as there're big blocks of my vision that are blurred while my retinas recover from the Sun card.

It's best if I don't linger too long on how I'm doing all of this, because this is A-1 trickster shit going down and, no matter my boasting, I'm not
that
good.

I look toward the brick wall and return to my original plan, now armed for anything that might be on the other side. If the door, hypothetically, responds to Sigil, it should just take a simple command.

“
Open.
”

The wall groans, the bricks sliding and grunting and scraping as the door swings outward to what appears to be a sitting room on the other side. I draw the Knight of Swords and move through the doorway before that brick wall changes its mind.

The room is decently sized, about as big as a living room for most people, with hoity-toity chairs that are named after monarchs, along with tapestries on the walls, sconces with oil lamps, rugs on the floor that are rather plush and probably took someone decades to make. The ceiling's high, having a hanging chandelier with lit candles. The wall slides closed behind me, melding almost perfectly with everything else, the kind of secret door you'd have to look for hours to find if you didn't know it was there.

Oh, and there's a sidhe, on his knees, the same prick who locked me in the air vent. His face is bruised, but placid, and his eyes have some fear in them. It's because my father is standing behind him, holding a gun to the Fae's head.

Dad chuffs at my sudden appearance, turning his head just enough to keep me and his prisoner in view.

“Spencer. About time you got yourself out of there. This one didn't want to share how to open the door.” He smirks down at the Fae. “Guess I don't need him anymore, and Granny Atropos ain't too wild about folk who live past the point of usefulness.” My father looks at me, still keeping that smile. “Close your eyes, son, I'd rather you didn't have to see this.”

“Dad, no! Please don't kill him.”

“Yes,” the sidhe quickly follows. “You cannot imagine the consequences. Show mercy and I will allow the both of you to leave.”

My father glances at me, and I look to him, pleadingly. The Coyote nudges the sidhe to glance in my direction. “See that? That's my boy, right there. Doesn't want to kill anyone, shows mercy. Just a good kid.” There's pride on his face as he continues. “Gets that from his mother, you know.”

He taps the barrel of the gun against the Fae's head. “Now you, you took him, scared the hell out of him, imprisoned him, and were planning to use him,
my son
, in your bullshit politics. Hell, you probably would've killed him anyway if I hadn't shown up, right?”