Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella (3 page)

I glanced up and down the street and found it empty. The sprites could come back for Chris, tow him away again. “Well, how do you stop the rite?”

Anwynn only stared at me blankly. “Beats me. Do I look like a font of information to you? I’m one of the lesser Fae,” she said, bitterness seeping into her tone. “I just do what I’m told.”

I dug into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I only knew one person in Portland who might be able to answer my question. I hadn’t called Kailen since our encounter outside the coffee shop, after I’d just signed divorce papers. Just thinking of him made me recall his scent—sweet and slightly spicy—the softness of his hair beneath my fingers, his arms around me.

I’d needed to put some distance between us.

“You could pop over to the Fae world,” Anwynn said, her voice a low rumble. “Ask your biological parents.”

I weighed the awkwardness of a conversation with Kailen against the awkwardness of a conversation with my biological parents. I hadn’t exactly left them on good terms. The last time I’d seen my mother, I’d had harsh words for her. She and my father had placed me in the mortal world; they’d given me up—and not in the hopes of securing a better life for me. They’d done it to secure a better life for Fae and mortals alike. My happiness hadn’t been a part of that equation.

And Faolan, my father? The last time I’d seen him, he’d been in the Multnomah County Jail. They’d released him after they’d discovered the real murderer, Grian, but I hadn’t been there.

Besides, I had a mortal marked for blood rites to protect. Popping over to the Fae world felt like a bad idea at the moment. I sighed and hit the call button.

Kailen picked up on the second ring. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“You haven’t called,” he said. “Why?”

“You haven’t called either.” I looked up into Anwynn’s brown eyes. Her ear flicked as a breeze passed. I frowned and waved a hand, shooing her away. She turned her head to the side and pretended to watch the flies around the streetlamp.

“It didn’t seem like you wanted me to call,” he said.

“Maybe that answers why I haven’t called,” I said.

He was silent for a while, and I wondered if he would hang up. And then he took a deep breath. “Sky and stars, and the great Void too, but I’ve missed you.”

One part of my mind noted that he’d only known me for a couple short months, and he’d been alive for over two hundred years; how could he miss me? But my heart kicked at my ribs, and my breathing quickened.

Friends could miss each other, right?

I got a hold of myself. We both had too much baggage to be doing this, and I had bigger issues to deal with than the leanings of a wayward heart. “I’ve got a problem. Do you know how to stop a blood rite once someone has been marked?”

Kailen cleared his throat, his voice going businesslike. “Well, there aren’t a lot of ways to stop a blood rite once it’s begun. It’s powerful magic.”

“But there are ways?”

“Yes. You can kill the creator of the blood rite.”

I heard his breathing crackling through the phone as I waited. Why did it always have to come down to death with the Fae? “Any other ways?” I said finally, my patience lost.

“You can also purify the intended victim of a blood rite. Blood rites are very dark magic, so you need to break it with very good magic. You’d need to wash the intended victim with water a unicorn has purified. The face, the hands, and just over the heart. It can only be broken by another Sidhe, so it has to be you.”

“A unicorn,” I said flatly. Oh sure, I’ll just go get my handy dandy unicorn and have this all done with. So…unicorns existed, apparently. “Fine, fine,” I said, willing to run with anything at this point. “So where do I get water that a unicorn has purified? Somewhere in the Fae world, right?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Kailen said, his voice hesitant.

“Of course it isn’t.”

“Most of the unicorns died off during the war between Merlin and Morgan. It was a while ago, but they live for a very long time and don’t breed often, so there aren’t many left.”

My nails dug into the outside of my phone. “So where do I find one?”

“Nicole,” Kailen said, with the air of a parent about to tell his child that Santa Claus was not, in fact, real, “the Fae world is big. Very, very big.”

“Can I get a hold of some purified water or not?”

“Let me think,” he said. “I mean, someone might have kept a vial or two somewhere.”

Anwynn spoke up. “There’s a market on the Tullochs’ land. Lots of rare and unusual items. You might be able to find some there, but expect to pay top dollar for it.”

“Why do you need to know how to stop a blood rite?” Kailen said. “Or should I even ask?”

Across the street, the lights in the second floor of Chris’s house flicked on. I didn’t want to tell him about what would happen to him in five days. “Apparently, Grian isn’t the only one of the Sidhe with sinister intent when it comes to the mortal world. I caught a group of sprites trying to drag a poor man off to who knows where. I freed him, but now I need to find some way to protect him, preferably a way that’s not flashy or involves him and his wife staying in my house.”

“Where are you? Let me help.”

Desperation and bad ideas—I had them in spades. On the other hand, who else did I have to call on? There were Dorian and my parents, and I didn’t want to go running to either just because the going suddenly got tough. This was
my
job.

“Okay,” I said, and gave him the address to Chris’s house. “I’m going to head out. The sprites won’t have the time to report back before you get here. Ward his house. I need to get to the Fae world, dig up some info, find some purified water, and come back.”

“Not a bad idea.” Did he sound relieved that we wouldn’t see one another, face-to-face, or was I just projecting?  “There are loose tongues at the Tullochs’ market. They’re well-known for their ales, wines, and liquors, and more than a few Fae sample the family’s wares at the market. Be safe. Are you certain you don’t need me along?”

“I’ve got Anwynn with me.”

Kailen’s voice lowered, and I saw Anwynn’s ears prick. “You need to go to the Fae world with someone you can trust.”

Who did he mean? He couldn’t possibly be referring to himself. He’d lied to me more times than I could count—about his heritage, his intentions, his past. Anwynn had made it clear she could drop me like a hot potato if she found a better prospect, but at least the frailty of our bond was out in the open. It was something I could guard against.

Kailen’s lies landed like an invisible blow to the stomach, mid-breath.

Besides, he’d been banished from the Fae world years ago. “I’ll be fine,” I said curtly. “Where’s the connection to Tulloch lands?”

“In the alleyway behind a certain donut shop.”

“I know the one.” I hit the end button before I could say any of the thousand other things on my mind:
I miss you, too. I wish you’d been honest. I wish you were completely over your dead wife. You hurt me. I understand why you lied. Goodbye. I can’t stand you.

“Come on,” I said to my hound and headed back down the street. She fell into step beside me, padding silently, her claws retracted.

“I heard what he said about me,” she said in a low growl. “I don’t like him.”

I didn’t bother to respond to that. I pulled my jacket tighter around myself and zipped it up, covering the tattered shirt beneath. Some of the wounds still oozed a little, each movement bringing with it fresh stinging pain.

I had a crazy Fae running around Portland with sprite henchmen—and blood rites. It was times like these I wished I still worked for Frank Gibbons, Inc., selling daily planners. The sprites indicated that the hooded figure was one of the greater Fae, the Sidhe. Now I just had to figure out which Fae families had bonded sprites and who might be interested in dark magic.

Anwynn cleared her throat. “Can I have a television in my room?”

And I had a hound who liked to push boundaries. I checked for people on the street and found it empty. It was starting to get late. “Why do you need a television in your room? There’s one in the living room. And it’s not like you had a television when you were working for Grian.”

“But there were other amusements,” Anwynn said. “She let me eat sprites, for one. If I want to watch the television and you’re already watching, I have to watch what you’re watching.”

“Deal with it. I don’t feel like spending money now that I don’t have a job.”

My grushound tilted her head to the side, as if considering the leaves on the sidewalk. “I suppose I will just have to remain unhappy then, and with us wandering back into the Fae world, too.”

I stared at her hairy back, laced with tiny wounds. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yes. Can I have the television?”

What a
bitch
, literally and figuratively. “You know what?” I told her, pulling the leash out of my pocket and snapping it onto her collar. “As your liege lord, I’ll give that request the consideration it deserves.”

She said nothing else, but I could see the tension in her shoulders as she walked, and her ears flattened against her skull.

As soon as we got back to the car, I let her off the leash again. It was a small reprimand, and I knew she understood it. It would have been nice if we could have been friends, but who was I kidding? If Anwynn weren’t beholden to me, she probably would have just
eaten
me by now. It wasn’t the bond that made our relationship strained.

I drove over the Willamette and to the other side of town, where the donut shop was. A light misting of rain coated the windshield as I drove, the early spring weather given to capriciousness.

As soon as I parked and stepped out of the car, I felt it. The presence of a doorway was like a blankness in my mind. If I closed my eyes and imagined the environment around me,  doorways existed as a black spot, devoid of light and shape.

This one was up against the wall of the donut shop, and it felt fresh. The edges weren’t tattered or worn, like the ones created by Kailen’s wristwatch over the years. This was clean. It had been created by moonstone, and it hadn’t yet disappeared.

A few cars still drove by, tires sliding over the moist-slick streets, but no one paid attention to the alleyway. “Anwynn,” I whispered to her, in case anyone was listening. “Smell anything?”

She set her nose to work, sniffing the air, the walls, and the ground. Her lip curled back. “One of the Sidhe has been here. I’d bet my life on it.”

“Do you know who?”

She gave me a level gaze. “You realize that I am one of the lesser Fae, that I, until recently, didn’t have eyes, and oh, I also don’t have a fondness for your kind. You’re all the same to me. I don’t know who this is. All I know is that this is one of the Sidhe, they have Sidhe magic, and they used it in this vicinity.”

“Fine. Signature scent?” Every Sidhe had a scent attached to his or her magic. Mine was dark chocolate. You could clean it up after performing magic, but grushounds had the most powerful sense of smell among the Fae.

She sniffed again. “Smells like a flower. Calendula.”

It could have been any of the Sidhe (Dorian, after all, seemed to pop between worlds like doing something illegal was going out of style). But given the proximity to the sprites I’d been chasing, and the freshness of this doorway, I could reasonably assume it had been created by the hooded figure.

Who had then subsequently gone to Tulloch family lands.

I ran a hand through my hair, as if I had to look presentable for anyone, and strode toward the doorway. “Looks like our goals end at the same place,” I said, in an attempt to quell my anxiety.

“
Your
goals,” Anwynn said.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and stepped through the doorway.

CHAPTER THREE

STEPPING THROUGH A DOORWAY ISN’T LIKE STEPPING
from one room into another. It’s like going from the back door of your house to the pool house, except the space in between is utterly dark, devoid of sound, and colder than a winter in Antarctica. You can’t feel your legs or your hands or even your face. You just have to trust that the momentum from stepping through carries you safely to the other side.

Because if it doesn’t, you cease to exist.

Or so the legends say. There’s really not a good way to verify that. The Void. My favorite place.

I popped back into existence again in the sunny hollow between two rolling, green hills. Sweat had beaded on my forehead; my hand shook as I lifted it to wipe away the moisture. Anwynn appeared next to me, irritatingly unruffled. The Void never seemed to affect lesser Fae the way it did the Sidhe.

“Which way is the market?” I said, my voice tremulous.

Anwynn’s ears pricked as she swiveled her head, and in the ensuing silence, I heard the sounds myself. There was a low hum, like you get near a beehive, the occasional clanking sound, and the knocking of wood against wood.

“Over there,” she said and led the way. I followed her up the side of one of the hills, my hand on the butter knife in my pocket. Our would-be-murderer had fled toward these lands. If I encountered her or him, I’d want to be ready.

As soon as we crested the hill, I saw the marketplace. It spread out between the valleys, like too much rain formed into puddles. Trees grew on the hillsides, providing shade for the various Fae that walked between stalls and carts, searching for the wares they wanted. Some merchants had even spread rugs across the grass, their inventory laid out on the ground. The faint smell of something cooking wafted into my nostrils—something sweet and savory, like barbecued pork. My mouth watered and I remembered that I’d only had the chance to wolf down a pretzel while I’d been hunting down the sprites.

I headed down the slope toward the market. This wasn’t my first time in the Fae world, but it was my first time among the general populace. “Keep an eye out for anyone cloaked in blue and brown. And don’t let me do anything stupid,” I muttered to Anwynn.

“Don’t give me an impossible task,” she bit back. “Too often there’s little chance to stop you.”