Pale Queen Rising (8 page)

“Learning anything?” I ask.

“Not yet,” Eli replies.

“You shouldn’t have gone off.”

“I saw an opportunity. And you were too busy ogling.”

“I wasn’t—” I begin, but stop myself. Unlike the Fey, I
can
lie, but Mab raised me not to—doing so invoked the worst type of punishments she could imagine. And she has quite the imagination. Even now it’s hard to do so much as fib. “Fine. There’s something about the singer, though. I think she’s our girl.”

Eli nods while the drummer continues to ramble on about money and ingratitude and other things I can barely hear. I can just make out Roxie’s silhouette from here. She’s dancing across the stage, playing to the crowd and singing to her band in turn. I’ve never been a fan of rockabilly music, but she could convert me.

“Clearly,” Eli says. “She’s enchanted.”

“What?”

Eli nods to her.

“She’s enchanted. Some sort of glamour. To make people fall in love with her.”

“You think she’s a witch?”

“I don’t know what she is,” he says. He elbows the drummer, who doesn’t cease his rambling. “And neither does he. Apparently, though, the band wasn’t playing anything bigger than a bar show two months ago. Now they’re doing an international tour that’s selling out fast.”

“Instant fame?” I muse. “Sounds like a witch’s work to me.”

“It would make sense,” he says. He leans closer to me and whispers in my ear, “I think I found my first meal.”

I look past his shoulder to the drummer, who’s probably in his midthirties and is covered knuckle-to-neck in tattoos. None of which are very good. He’s got gauges you could stick a tennis ball through and a backwards baseball cap. And red flannel. Sleeveless, of course.

“Really? Didn’t you want a debutante last time?”

“Tastes change,” Eli says. “Besides, this little spell will leave him addled and probably a little brain-dead. It’s really for the best you let me take him.”

“Damn it, Eli.” There’s not much vitriol behind it. I can’t make myself care about the drummer, not while Roxie’s out there singing about a guy in a bar with a broken heart. “We were supposed to collaborate.”

“And we are,” he says, giving me a devilish grin. “You get to choose whether I take his soul or let him live as a vegetable.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. He’s all yours.”

“Yesss,” he hisses, doing that annoying bro fist-clench thing that really doesn’t suit his current persona.

“But not until after we get
her
to talk,” I say, nodding to Roxie. “I don’t want you distracted.”

“I don’t think I’m the one getting distracted.”

I glare at him. “Excuse me?”

“I said,
as you say, boss
.”

“Damn right you did.”

I turn my attention back to Roxie, who’s now singing at a horn player who’s echoing her refrains. Dream flows around her like a whirlpool. I don’t know how they’re collecting it, but they’re definitely bringing in a lot tonight. Whoever killed off our collector here must have known they were coming in advance—hell, before they were even really popular.
A score this big could feed all of Winter for a day,
I think. It’s more than a music show should realistically bring in. It’s almost like they’re pulling it from the crowd, which shouldn’t be possible. If you could just rip Dream from mortals, Mab would have set up a factory centuries ago.

Roxie sings along like she’s the center of the world. Her skin practically glows. I can’t take my eyes off her, off the curve of her waist and the pucker of her lips, and something in me twists every time she glances toward the wing, when her eyes blindly pass over the shadows where I lurk. I force the feelings down as my fingers clench around the knife hidden in my pocket. She’s beautiful and she knows it.

It’s a shame she won’t be that pretty when I’m done with her.

After the encore, Roxie exits through the other side of the stage, and Eli and I head to the lobby, leaving the drummer behind.

“He’ll make a good midnight snack,”
Eli tells me as we leave. Hopefully that means I won’t need to be around to see it. Watching an astral creature rip out a mortal’s soul isn’t a pretty sight. Coming from an assassin, that’s saying something.

It takes far too long for the crowd to disperse; Roxie and the rest come out to sign autographs and CDs and T-shirts, and Eli and I head up to the balcony to survey the lobby in secrecy and wait it out. I try to just watch the mortals and Fey milling about the band, but my gaze keeps snapping back to Roxie. I clearly need to get laid soon, before it starts interfering with the job.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Eli asks.

“Probably,” I reply. I have a half-dozen charms and wards against detection from Fey, but Eli’s a veritable beacon, even though part of the summoning circle included some wards for stealth. “Does it matter?”

“No. I’m just curious if they understand the danger they’re in. They seemed so enthusiastic up there.”

I shrug. For once, I don’t really enjoy the idea of taking out a hit. There’s something about Roxie that’s hard to hate. Maybe it’s her smile. Or her giggle. Or even those stupid little personal narratives she told onstage about growing up in Tennessee and dreaming of seeing the world. Whatever it is, it goes beyond my training. And I hate her for it. I grab a dagger from my pocket and practice scratching small summoning circles on the banister.

Finally, the crowd’s mostly gone and the ushers are going through the place to make sure it’s cleared out. Rather than try to explain myself to a mortal or charm the wits out of them, I twist an onyx-and-bone ring on my right pinky finger twice. A chill breathes over me, like a billow of cold air. The ring’s made from the bone of a thief who was buried under a new moon. Simple trick, but effective against mortals.

“Lame,” Eli says the moment I go invisible. He can still see me, or at least the ghost of me. He doesn’t even bother making himself invisible; all he has to do is will it, and humans look the other way. Mortals don’t often see what they don’t want to.

We head downstairs, past a few clerks arguing about some obscure band I’ve never heard of, and out to the alley where the tour bus is kept. Roxie is traveling first class—the bus is sleek and black and clearly brand-new, with tinted windows and the band name written across the side in white curving script.

I twist the ring the other way. Don’t need the stealth; the rain is heavy and pounding against the bus like a drum, and a club down the street is blaring really bad death metal. Or really good. I never could tell the difference.

In any case, there’s no one in the alley and no way the band inside the bus can hear us approaching through the din. I grab two butterfly knives and flip them open the moment we’re a few feet from the bus door. Eli, umbrella open and sheltering only himself, just smiles at me. I’ve never seen him use a weapon. I’ve never seen him need one.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Of course. I’m starving.”

We step forward and I press my ear to the door, a finger on my lips. Before we go in guns blazing, I want to make sure they didn’t bring back any mortals. Casualties aren’t something I want to deal with tonight. I can hear muffled voices inside, but with the rain and the death metal that’s pretty much it. So I reach up to the bronze hawk locket around my neck and press my thumb against the moonstone in its eye. Despite the cold, the stone is almost hot to my touch.

“—be happy,” comes a masculine voice. “Easily our best take yet.”

A sob. Wait, someone’s crying?

“Does that mean I can go?”

Shit. It’s Roxie. What does she mean,
go
?

The only answer to her plea is laughter.

I look to Eli. “Leave the girl to me,” I whisper.

I expect him to make some sort of witty comeback, but he just nods and takes off his sunglasses, folding them in a breast pocket. Rain flashes in the light of his eyes like faerie lights. I’ve heard enough to know that the band is, in fact, stealing Dream, which is punishable by death. Conscience clean as far as the musicians are concerned. Roxie, though . . . she’s a potential conundrum. One I’ll worry about when it comes to it. Time to dance.

Taking a deep breath, I grab the door handle and burst inside.

There’s a momentary pause as the band members try to figure out what the hell’s going on. They freeze and stare at me and Eli, and then they catch on to the fact that he’s clearly not human, and I’m clearly not a fangirl, and they leap into motion.

The guy closest to me—bald, still in his suit—grabs a beer bottle from the table and swings.

I’m covered in charms for slowing time or speeding my reflexes. It’s why I wear so much jewelry when going into battle. But it’s clear when the first guy attacks that none of that will be necessary. Hell, the fact that I have time to think any of this while he leaps is indicator enough.

I duck and jab my knife into his ribs, angled toward the heart, and the iron blade goes cold as ice in my grip. Leaving it in his side, I twist around him just in time to meet the horn player, who’s suddenly covered in talons and spikes that shred through his suit. Sadly for him, the scales haven’t reached his neck yet, and one quick stab just above the shoulder drops him to his knees. Before he’s even gasped his last breath, I have the next two knives in my hands.

Turns out I don’t need them.

Eli’s lounging on the sofa with one arm around Roxie, the other held before him as he examines his nails. The other three musicians are dead on the ground. Eli brushes an imaginary bit of fluff from his pant leg and winks at me.

“Took you long enough,” he says.

I flip the butterfly knives closed and flip him off. Black and blue blood pools on the floor, which tells me they were all born in the mortal world. Those born in Faerie don’t bleed, just vanish in a puff of leaves or glitter or smoke. Very dramatic.

Roxie is frozen on the sofa. I mean, not literally: she’s still shaking, and tears are running silently down her cheeks. But save for that, she isn’t moving, and I know it’s not just Eli’s nearness or the death of her band that’s causing her stress. I glance down. My clothes are splattered blue and black, like some grotesque yet oddly apt Pollock painting, and with the blades in my hands I know I look like a madwoman. Sadly, I don’t have any magical trinkets for that. The stains, that is. Looking like a madwoman is just a fact of my life.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” I say when I look back to her. She’s trying her hardest not to touch Eli, which is pretty much impossible.

“Yet,” Eli says. He gives her a friendly squeeze and she cringes. “If you play your cards right.”

I gingerly step over the bodies as I make my way toward her—not that I care about respecting the dead, but because I don’t think it would give her the best impression of me. That’s when I realize—why the hell does it matter what she thinks of me? And for that matter, why are there butterflies in my stomach?

I chalk it up to the effects of her enchantment or whatever the hell it is and leave it at that.

“Are you one of them?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t shake. I’m impressed; the girl knows how to put on a front. She also knows what she’s dealing with. Not entirely innocent, then. Her eyes don’t leave mine. We hold that gaze for a moment while my chest burns, and to my complete embarrassment, it’s me who looks away. Who
is
this girl?

“Something like that,” I say. When I glance back at her, there’s a small grin on her face, one that slips away immediately. “Though I play for a different team.”

She and Eli are on the sofa, so I grab a seat next to the small dining table. The bus might be big for a new band, but it’s not
that
big. I have to push the horn player to the ground before sitting.

“The question is,” I say, propping my feet on the table, “how are
you
involved with them?”

“They’re my band,” she says slowly. “Or,
were
. Until you came along.”

Oh yes, please do play a little hard to get
. It just makes my night more entertaining.

“But they weren’t always your band,” I say. “And barely a minute ago, you were crying over them letting you go.”

She opens her mouth, and I raise a hand.

“Before you think of lying again,” I interrupt, “let me just inform you that the man sitting next to you isn’t actually human, and I’ve killed more people in the last year than you’ve met on tour. Neither of us are interested in mercy. We have a job to do, and you’re going to help us do it or you’ll die. Maybe both if you keep pretending to be innocent.” My words are cold and stoic, completely at odds with the emotions warring within me. I don’t want to hurt this girl. I don’t want to intimidate her. Which makes absolutely zero sense.

Eli leans in and sniffs Roxie’s neck. She flinches. It’s a perfectly creepy yet completely unnecessary touch, and a small part of me is jealous that he gets to be the one doing it. “You reek of magic, my dear,” he says. “You’ve been playing with forces you shouldn’t and stealing Dream from someone you
definitely
shouldn’t.”

And, quite surprisingly, Roxie’s cool facade shatters as she bursts into tears. Now it’s Eli’s turn to flinch; he withdraws his hand and slides over on the seat a little, making more space between them. There’s a small part of me that wants to comfort the girl, but this is an interrogation. Business mode. And business-me doesn’t have emotions. At least, not usually.