changeling chronicles 03 - faerie realm (4 page)

“She’s a faerie who hates my guts.” I walked to the sofa with my sandwich. “Creepy old cow probably tried to be as vague as possible. I’m supposed to be going on a date with Vance, and—”

Isabel cleared her throat. “It’s the full moon tonight. Did you forget?”

Shit. “Seriously?” That explained the crashes upstairs. While the biggest part of the shifter population lived behind the metal fence surrounding their territory, others chose to live amongst humans and lock themselves away on the week following the full moon. Like our upstairs neighbours. Henry and Susie were peaceable neighbours three weeks out of every four. Then they chained themselves up in their own flat when they transformed, and Isabel and I usually had babysitting duty. It was an unorthodox relationship, but it worked.

Problem: I was
supposed
to go out with Vance tonight.

“Sorry,” said Isabel. “I have to go to the meeting. I’ll take over tomorrow night.”

“It’s cool.” Vance and I would have other date nights. Plenty more. No faeries, stupid vow or not, would stop us. “Damn. I forgot. If this is the first day…”

“Then we have six more days of babysitting,” said Isabel. “Two coven meetings. You’ll get your date night, don’t worry.” She winked. “I’m glad you two made it up.”

“Yeah. I should call him, but he’s in a meeting.” I sighed. If not the faeries, other supernaturals were conspiring to eradicate my attempts at a love life. Still, this was going better than my last attempts to pursue a relationship.
Well, that’s depressing.

Isabel re-shouldered her bag. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

“Sure.” I took a bite of my sandwich. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Isabel kept an eye on the moon’s phases for coven meetings, but I should have checked the dates. I’d spent the last week hiding in my room in recovery mode.

Hmm. Maybe this accounted for Vance’s slightly off behaviour earlier. He was only a quarter shifter, but most shifters went off the rails on the week surrounding the full moon. Vance gave off a predatory vibe at the best of times, which wasn’t necessarily a
bad
thing.
Enough, Ivy.
Thinking about him wouldn’t help me forget my disappointment.

Sighing, I picked up the Ley Line map. Might as well search out possible spots someone could have hidden a powerful magical object.

***

Two hours later and I had a total of six places listed. One was the Necromancy Guild, which I made a mental note to check up on at some point. Frank, the necromancer ghost I’d met, had heavily implied he wanted me to be some kind of liaison between the dead and the living, which I’d have been sceptical of under normal circumstances, let alone now the necromancers saw me as their mortal enemy.

Could a powerful store of magic be hidden amongst the necromancers? They’d overlooked traitors in their ranks before. Surely they’d have noticed a breach of the veil. Unless it had happened while they’d been preoccupied with the undead who’d risen when the veil opened last time. Their territory wasn’t particularly secure. I’d broken in with a simple lock pick once.

“Great,” I muttered, aloud. “So much for being done cleaning up their problems.”

In theory, I could hop over the veil and speak to Frank any time I wanted, but I wasn’t overly keen to embrace mortality again anytime soon. Especially considering who else waited for me in Death.

I’ll kill your mage first.

My hands clenched and I stood, dropping the map. I moved away from the sofa, found a clear floor space and ran through my combat forms. I wasn’t welcome at the mercenary guild’s training grounds anymore and swinging a sword in the flat was asking for trouble, so I held an invisible weapon instead. I relaxed into the familiar forms, letting my worry and frustration fade into the background. With strike after strike, I cut down invisible enemies, imagining I duelled a faerie warrior. A warrior with…

I stopped. Wait. The heart of an ancient tree in Faerie could be used to create any object of power. The Sidhe forged their swords in that way—in fact, Avakis’s sword had once stored his magic before I’d taken it. But I’d never learned about alternative sources of power. Pure faeries inherited their magic. A weapon, though, would be an ideal hiding place.

My phone buzzed on the table. I wiped sweat from my forehead with my sleeve and went to answer.

“Hey, Vance. How’d the meeting go?”

“As well as it could have. The other mages aren’t pleased with the half-faeries and the Chief’s utter lack of responsibility.”

“Maybe if we bring every mage in the district with us, we can get him to listen next time.”

“The Chief would take us as a threat. We’re on shaky ground. His people did a lot of damage while under the drug’s influence. The mages are aware they weren’t themselves, but the public have been difficult to convince.”

“Figures,” I said. “Anyway, I thought of something. You know Sidhe lords have blades forged from the hearts of their trees? Maybe that’s what we’re looking for. A weapon. It’d be a good way to hide a powerful source.”

A pause. “Good point, but a weapon is fragile to some extent. The odds of it being damaged are high.”

“Not if it has that much magic in it,” I said. “Don’t forget how many legends and stories involve enchanted swords. I’ve learnt most stories are true in some sense.”

“You know faeries better than I do,” said Vance, surprising me. “I’ll ask around, but whatever form it’s in, we need a tracking spell.”

“Isabel’s on it,” I said. “As for me, I want to talk to the necromancers again. Their place sits right on the Ley Line, and you know their track record for letting people slip over the veil within their territory.”

“I did request an audience with Lord Evander. He claims to be busy restoring the woken dead to rest.”

“Still? He’s had a week.” I rolled my eyes. “I know he doesn’t like me, but the necromancers were involved the first time some idiot decided to open the veil. Even if they aren’t responsible, they’re good at overlooking problems right under their noses.”

“Like the summoning circle,” said Vance. “I agree, and I’ll speak to him again later. Are you free tonight?”

“Would you believe I have babysitting duty? The shifters upstairs are going dark until morning.” I paused. “Are you… er, shifting?”

“No,” he said. “I’m quarter-blooded. I don’t go through a transformation.”

“Okay. Just checking you aren’t going to sprout claws on me tomorrow.”

“I could.” I heard the laugh in his voice. “But I rather think it’d spoil the atmosphere for our date.”

“So we’re okay to reschedule?”

“Of course.”

Sorted. I had twenty-four hours to avoid trouble, while babysitting a shifter kid all evening. What could possibly go wrong?

CHAPTER FOUR

“No,” I said, for the fifteenth time, leaping from the sofa and dragging five-year-old George’s hands away from the spell ingredients shelf. “I said not to touch those.”

His hands moved to the Ley Line map I’d left on the table, scrunching up the edge. I pushed the spells back into their proper place and reached to move his hands before he damaged the map, but he’d already grabbed an elastic band. There was a popping sound, and a torrent of purple glitter exploded all over the floor.
Dammit, Isabel.
I’d been joking when I’d said the best way to piss off a trespasser was to throw glitter at him.

“Or those.” Our flat was the definition of a danger zone for anyone, let alone an overly inquisitive five year old shifter. His parents, at the moment, were chained up in their room, and Isabel had barely come back for few minutes before leaving George and me alone. So far he’d thrown Erwin the piskie across the room and nearly started a fire. Shifter kids were moody at the full moon even if they couldn’t transform yet.

If I had to pick a babysitter, I wouldn’t choose a faerie-slaying freelancer with a penchant for attracting trouble and zero parenting skills. George was an adorable kid, but I was kind of tempted to put a spell circle around the safe area of the flat and leave him in it before he triggered one of Isabel’s explosives. I’d thought I’d cleared the floor of anything hazardous, but with this being a witch’s flat, even the floor was a hazard in some places. I reached for a cleansing spell and scooted George away from the glitter explosion so I could clean up the mess before everything in the flat ended up covered in purple sparkles.

Erwin flew past, shrieking, and George made a hissing noise, downright startling coming from a five-year-old.

“Whoa. Stop that.” I made to grab the piskie, but too late. He flew out of my reach and smacked into the coffee table, knocking a stack of papers into the spelled candle on the side. Luckily, the candle wasn’t lit, but bright purple wax stained the corner of what was probably an important paper. Erwin, meanwhile, landed feet-first in another candle, kicking bits of wax everywhere.

“Hey!” I lunged to grab him, but I’d made the mistake of taking my eyes off George. He picked up a charm, and before I could snatch it off him, snapped the elastic band.

A sharp clap of thunder whipped through the air—startling spell. George dropped it, howling, and crawled under the coffee table.

“Shit.” How did you calm a hysterical five-year-old shifter? We didn’t have a TV or radio. My idea of entertainment was reading a book or helping Isabel with spells.

“George, do you want to—”

Crash.
I whirled around in time to see Erwin take flight, thwacking into the glitter pile and causing another miniature explosion.

“Erwin!”

George screamed. The piskie took flight again, hitting the ceiling, the wall, and the bookcase in the corner where Isabel kept all her spellbooks.

“Whoa. Don’t get glitter on those. She’ll murder me.”

George yelled behind me, throwing a pencil at the piskie.

Oh, shit. That wasn’t a pencil. It was a point-and-shoot explosive. And I wasn’t close enough to catch it.

The piskie dived at the explosive. Panic shot through me, and I jumped to my feet, magic arcing from my hand. The bolt of blue energy struck Erwin, and his winged body dropped to the table. Pages fluttered to the ground where the blast knocked them loose. My faerie-quick instincts took over and I lunged, grabbing the explosive device before it blew up.

“Shit. Shit.” Never mind not swearing in front of a kid. Had I
killed
Erwin?

The piskie fluttered his wings. “Bad faerie,” he muttered.

“I’m so sorry.” I was, too. Erwin was a pain in the ass, but he’d lived here for years, and I’d developed a weird affection for the hyperactive little menace.

Behind me, George crawled out from under the table, gaping at me.

Damn. I’d never used magic in here before. Not by conscious choice, more because until recently, I’d only used it in self-defence. I’d been careful. Now it seemed to explode out of me at every opportunity. What the hell to say?

“Ivy, you scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

He nodded. Okay. That explanation worked.

George stood up. “You made him fly. Like the elf lady.”

I froze.
What?
“Who?” I asked, unintentionally sharply.

“I told you about her before. She comes here sometimes. I see her outside. She can fly.”

Shit. “I told you not to talk to her.”

“I don’t talk to her. She sometimes looks at me through the window.”

A chill raced down my back. “She’s a faerie. They’re dangerous.”

Whoever it was, I’d never seen them.
Creepy.
The wards kept out anyone who intended harm, but faeries were notorious for sneaking around traps.

“Never talk to the faeries,” I told him, crossing the room to finish cleaning up the glitter. “They’re liars, and some of them like to collect humans and take us back to their realm. You want to stay as far away as possible.”

“Take humans?”

I groaned inwardly. I was doing a shitty job at this, but the idea of someone from Faerie running off with this kid, because of me—no way in hell would I let that happen.

I set George on the sofa to play a game on my phone, while doubling up on the wards around the room and making sure no trace remained of the damage. I put Erwin to sleep in a corner—he had no memory to speak of and would probably forget this by tomorrow. But the nagging feeling persisted. I’d used magic twice in a day in front of people I didn’t want seeing it. What would happen when someone put two and two together and figured out where, exactly, it had come from? The Chief might be a liar, but I could kind of understand why he hadn’t made a general announcement about the Grey Vale’s existence, especially considering everyone was calming down from the hysteria a week ago.

Dammit. I didn’t want to
understand
the dickhead who’d gone out of his way to make my life difficult. I needed to speak to him again to see if he really did know anything useful. Maybe, god forbid, hold my tongue this time.

While George was entertaining himself, I checked on Erwin. Wisps of blue magic floated around him. It was definitely brighter than before. Why? I hadn’t been over to the Grey Vale this time. Maybe the Invocation had done it. I’d tapped into some serious power, and it shouldn’t be surprising that there’d be aftereffects.

The four branches of magic—mage, witch, necromancer and faerie—were more or less incompatible with one another. Necromancers and mages were the closest, except the former were concerned with communicating with the dead. Mages, on the other hand, tended to have one specialist skill. Like Vance’s space-bending ability.

As for faerie magic—in my case, it depended on the Lord I’d stolen it from. He’d been a Lord of Winter before he’d been exiled, but I’d never found myself throwing snowballs at people and conjuring blizzards when in a rage. Instead, I could draw upon negative emotions, both from myself and other people—pain and rage, mostly—plus throw energy around, and form a shield. I’d also healed myself, but in Faerie, not here. Oh, and I was pretty sure I could draw power from the dead, too, but again… I’d only done it once. In the Grey Vale.