Chapter Twenty-One

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The next day opened so peacefully that it was a little creepy. I woke up in the back seat of an appallingly green car with a fox curled up on my chest and a dog sprawled over my legs, both still fast asleep. The location was strange enough that I was momentarily disoriented and unsure where I was, but the company was familiar enough that there was no real anxiety in it.

We often ended up in roughly this circumstance. Of the three of us, only Raincloud could really be said to sleep well. But Saori’s issues were mostly to do with difficulty falling asleep to begin with and nightmares once she had. Duration was usually decent for her, and for me it just…wasn’t. I was almost always the first to wake up, and given that all three of us were fond of each other and tactile in how we expressed affection, I often did so like this. Saori slept in fur as often as not, and she tended to end up lying on top of me regardless of how we were arranged when she went to sleep, so when we slept together, this was how I woke up.

I stayed where I was. It felt…nice. I wasn’t nearly as touch-starved as I used to be, but the change was recent enough that the novelty hadn’t yet worn off. And I had nothing pressing to take care of right now, nothing that couldn’t wait. So I stayed right where I was, stroking Saori’s fur and drifting through thoughts without trying to fit them into words or assemble linear reason out of them. This sort of idle, quiet thought wasn’t the same as sleep, but it was a passable substitute.

Time slipped past me, uncounted and unremarked, full of music just consonant enough to merit the term. It was, if anything, probably more restorative than actually sleeping more would have been. My dreams were generally nowhere near this nice. Caffeine could compensate for a deficit in sleep; it did much less to make up for loneliness.

People rarely understood how much that mattered.

It was a longer wait than most mornings; even for me, this wasn’t much sleep. We’d been up well past dawn, and I woke up when it was barely past noon. I spent quite a while dozing like that before Saori woke up.

When she did, it was in the same way she always did. Physically, it was slow, languid and relaxed. She stretched, yawned, nuzzled at me. But this belied an underlying mental alertness. There was no uncertainty, no haziness or drowsiness. She was wide awake, all at once, alert and oriented before she opened her eyes.

We didn’t talk about our dreams much. I didn’t need anyone else’s nightmares, and mine were…not unlike Saori’s exploits, in a way. People generally only had to ask about them a few times to know that they didn’t want to know. So I didn’t know, in any detail, what featured in Saori’s nightmares. But I knew that she used to run with a pretty bad crowd, doing some pretty fucked up things. I knew she felt weird and uncomfortable about showing any kind of vulnerability, and that her family was about as functional as mine.

And I knew that she always woke up like this. By the time she moved at all, even to open her eyes, she was already alert and oriented to her environment. I was pretty sure that was a learned trait, and I was pretty sure she’d learned it the hard way.

It would be nice, I reflected, if the nightmares stopped when we woke up.

Today was better, though. She yawned, uncurled herself, and stretched. Then she shifted into skin, and suddenly instead of a fox, I had Saori sprawled over me in her human form. As most humans were significantly larger than a fox, this made the back seat of the car even more cramped. She was grinning at me with her face about four inches from mine.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice, in combination with the wriggling, had Raincloud waking up too, though she was significantly slower to do so. “Did we miss anything exciting?”

“Your sleep playlist dipped into dubstep mariachi music,” I said after a moment. “But that’s about it.”

“Cool. Let’s go get some caffeine.”

---

That eerily peaceful feeling lingered through the early afternoon. There were no assassination attempts, no calls. There was no sign of Dusk, and no indications of what social event she had meant. Nothing.

I had told Saori about her. It was with some reluctance; I was feeling uncertain, overwhelmed and unsure of who to trust, and there had been a real temptation to keep this development to myself. And if I was being honest, I didn’t trust Saori, not unconditionally. I didn’t think the kitsune would betray me, but my assessment of trustworthiness was not exactly famous for its accuracy. And I certainly couldn’t deny that there were elements of her behavior that disturbed me.

But at the end of the day, I had to trust someone or I would die in short order. I just didn’t have the personal skills or resources to survive this situation on my own, to say nothing of the toll it would take on my own sanity to try. And while Saori was a violent lunatic, she was my violent lunatic. The kitsune had not, at any point, directed real malice or threat towards me, and had seemed genuinely fond of me pretty much since day one.

Besides, there was nothing particularly secret about it. All I really knew after talking with Dusk, honestly, was that there was someone who seemed disturbingly powerful fucking with me, and she had spectacularly bad taste in fashion. The former was hardly news, and Saori had no more idea what it meant than I did; the latter got a lovely golden-fire laugh, but that was about it.

Regardless, there was no sign of her. And we obviously wouldn’t hear back from Lily until after dark, so the afternoon was largely ours to spend as we pleased. Saori didn’t want to stay in one place, saying that it was smarter to keep moving with someone hunting me. I suspected her reasoning also included a fair bit of amusement at subjecting me to more time in a lime-green nightmare taking corners at implausible speeds and blasting bizarre music at anyone remotely close to us. But that didn’t make her stated reason less valid, and I didn’t argue.

We wrapped up with what might be considered an early dinner or very late breakfast, depending on how you looked at it, in a very Polish restaurant I hadn’t been to before. Raincloud wasn’t allowed in, but while the staff weren’t willing to actually let a dog inside, Saori had no difficulty convincing them to seat us next to an unlocked window and quietly look the other way as to who might be sitting outside it.

Saori says she has charisma. Personally, I tended to think it was more that people were either too fascinated to stand in the way of her insanity or too disturbed to keep questioning her about it. But regardless, the effect was much the same, and looking past Saori out the window I could see Raincloud right outside. She, in turn, appeared to be watching the start of the sunset.

“So how much of a problem is this going to be for you?” Saori asked me eventually, through a sausage whose constituency I was not prepared to speculate upon.

“Uh. The idea of only one ‛this’ causing me problems right now seems quaint at best,” I said.

“Having your house burnt down,” the kitsune clarified.

“Ohh. Actually probably not much of one,” I said. I shrugged. “It was insured. And strictly speaking it wasn’t mine; it was VNC that had the title to the property. If there’s anyone who can get an insurance claim through even though it was arson, it’s them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to turn a profit for me in the process. Should be able to find another place.”

“That’s something, then.” She was quiet for a few minutes, then asked, “Do you think you’ll be alright if I go do something tonight?”

“You’re really into asking questions I have no way of answering tonight, huh?” I asked dryly. “It will depend on who tries to kill me how. Why?”

“Well,” Saori said, “if you’re right about Ekaterina being a maenad, I’ve got a friend who probably knows her. I was able to get into contact with her, and she’s in town tonight. Thought I might go ask her some questions.”

“Ah,” I said. “And bringing a stranger along would cause issues.”

“Actually, not this time. It’s just that we usually meet up over a game of cards. And if the first time Camellia meets you is in a game of poker, trust me, she will never respect you.”

I sighed. Then, at a sudden mental prompt, sighed further. “Raincloud wants to know if she can come along,” I said wearily.

Saori laughed like a hyena made of fire. “Why the hell not,” she said.

Great. I wasn’t sure what was worse: That my dog had been deemed more capable of making a strong first impression on seedy supernatural creatures than I was, or that they were probably right.

---

Food was eaten. Saori licked my teeth clean before she left, and told me that if I died while she was gone she was going to learn necromancy so she could drag my ghost back and beat the shit out of it. I was pretty sure that wasn’t how things worked, but in its own strange, spectacularly dysfunctional way it was quite sweet of her to say.

They left, Raincloud laughing her head off at me inside of mine, and I was left alone to watch the last of the sunset.

I went to wash my hands after eating. When I got back to the table, I found something waiting for me. The waiter had left the check, but there was a second, larger piece of paper next to it.

With a distinct feeling of trepidation, I reached for it. Not paper, I noticed, but rather vellum. I had to admit a certain curiosity about that. Who actually writes on vellum these days?

I got my answer about five seconds later, and trepidation immediately shot up to dread. It read:

You are cordially invited

To attend a Gathering and Festival of

The Courts of the Sidhe

Seelie and Unseelie alike

And to bring one Escort of your choosing

With the compliments of

Our most Gracious Host

The Lady Nephele

To mark the Beginning

of the New Year to come

I stared. I stared some more. The words remained stubbornly the same, gorgeous calligraphy with illumination and a subtle, abstract watermark. It would not have looked out of place in an exhibit showcasing the finest examples of medieval calligraphy as an art form.

I was fucked. So utterly, unbelievably fucked.

It wasn’t even just that I’d been invited to a high-society party with the Sidhe Courts. I mean, I was, and that was more than enough to inspire a feeling of imminent doom. But even more than that, it was the context that scared me. It was the implications.

Dusk had said that securing entrance to this “social event” was an impossible task for me. I fully believed that; the notion of me even being able to find someone important enough to be invited and attend as their escort was ludicrous. She had also said that it represented a trivial effort for her, and now that I knew what event she actually meant, that was terrifying to think about.

And while she might have been lying, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach saying otherwise. It really was barely an effort at all for her. Trivial. Arranging an invitation to a party being thrown by the most personally and politically powerful faeries there were was a trivial action for her.

And I owed her a favor. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that I had so much flexibility when it came to repaying that. Even if the favor itself turned out to be completely harmless, and I did not believe for an instant that would be the case, the simple fact that I had her attention and a credit-debt relationship with her was terrifying. There just weren’t that many people who could secure an invitation like this, and broadly speaking, they were the sort of people you wanted as little to do with as possible. This was frightening in an entirely different way than the assassination attempts. The phrase “fate worse than death” existed for a reason.

I just sat at the table staring at the piece of vellum in front of me for almost half an hour. I was busy contemplating the mistakes and life choices that had led me here. Those thoughts were bleak enough that when, shortly after sunset, I got a call from a vampire to set up her debrief about someone who was trying to kill me, it felt like a pleasant reprieve.

---

Lily had suggested a cheap hotel as a meeting place. I had no reason to argue; it was easy, anonymous, and close enough that I could suck it up and take a bus there without much difficulty.

When I got there, I found that it was a very cheap hotel indeed, really more of a motel and about as trashy as such places got. I found the right room, knocked to make it less likely I’d get shot in the face by a paranoid vampire, and then opened the door.

The door was neither locked nor trapped, I didn’t get shot, and the paranoid vampire was actually there. It was quite the unexpected hat trick, really.

“Okay,” I said. “How’d it go?”

Lily shrugged. “Reasonably well. I saw and tracked the attacker; he had a good veil up, but was insufficiently attentive to both scent and sound. He was able to maintain it while shooting, though, which suggests fair discipline. I was able to follow him back to what seems to be a headquarters of some kind, and I don’t believe he was aware of my presence.”

“That sounds like a win to me, great job. What can you tell me about him?”

“He’s cautious,” she said after a moment’s thought. “He spread the accelerant, not one I recognize, then set up a fuse and retreated a fair distance before actually igniting it. Firearm was a heavy rifle, also not a make I recognize; not as large a calibre as a .50 BMG, I’m pretty sure, but close. As soon as the angle was bad and he would have to move to keep shooting at you, he left, kept the veil up as he did. He went about four blocks, then got into a car; it was already running, which suggests an accomplice to me, but they were already gone if so.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “He had a car?”

“Yes. Generic SUV. Looked like a rental if I had to guess. No plates.”

“Sure, whatever. You managed to tail him on foot?” I was impressed by that, and more than a little spooked. Lily keeping up with someone who had a car and no traffic to speak of was…eerie to think about.

It didn’t help that she just smiled in reply. Her teeth looked very white, and otherwise very normal, not like fangs at all.

I sighed. “Okay. Anyway. He got in a car, what happened next?”

“He drove west-northwest at a fair pace for roughly six miles. He dropped the veil while driving, and did not do any of the evasive driving I would expect of someone attempting to lose a tail.”

“Six miles,” I said, thinking through where that would be. Then, abruptly, I broke down laughing.

Lily gave me an odd look. “I take it you’re familiar with this?”

“Yes,” I said, still a little breathless. “Yes, I am. He’s based out of fucking Fairywood?” I sounded incredulous, because I was. Fairywood was…an excellent case study in urban collapse. There was an ambitious highway started that direction, west of the city, in the sixties and seventies when the economy seemed so good and optimism was running high. It never got finished, and now sits there as a few fragments of road, called the Highway to Nowhere by locals.

That was pretty much how the rest of Fairywood went, too. By now it was more urban prairie than actual city, with only a few warehouses and industrial plants still functioning in most of the neighborhood. There were a few residential areas, but by and large, it was almost abandoned aside from those industrial parks, and even those were sparse and barely used. Maddie said that Fairywood was where dreams went to die. I couldn’t really contest that description.

Lily paused then, and while she didn’t actually laugh, I got a strong impression of amusement all the same. Maybe between being undead and being reserved by nature, laughter just wasn’t something she did. “This does not surprise me,” she said after that momentary pause. “Because I’m almost certain he’s one of the Sidhe.”

My laughter had been dying down. But I broke out into giggles again at that, and they were only slightly hysterical. The Sidhe assassin was based out of Fairywood. Of fucking course he was.

“He went to a mansion at that point. East of the mansion, there’s a large parking lot. The nearest neighbor is on the other side of the lot, a warehouse complex that looks to be abandoned,” the vampire continued, once I’d gotten myself back under a semblance of control. “Probably a shipping depot, still has shipping containers around the building. The other three sides of the mansion face directly onto wooded hills; I don’t believe there’s road access except through that lot, and there’s a light screen of trees between the lot and the mansion. The building is warded, and the magic feels fae to me, as did the assassin himself. I wasn’t able to get inside.”

“No, that’s fine,” I said. “Honestly I’d be disappointed if you’d tried, because that would be a really stupid risk.”

Her lips twitched into another smile, this one thinner, more predatory, and more honest. “Tend to agree. But I can tell you he’s definitely not working alone. I could hear at least eight targets moving around inside. The wards are decently strong, but nothing beyond what I would expect. I was able to roughly estimate the building’s layout, but I don’t know how accurate that estimate is; it’s not listed in any official records, so I couldn’t get the actual blueprint for it.”

“That’s fine. This is still pretty damn impressive.” I hadn’t been expecting to get nearly this level of detail from this gambit. Right about now, I was feeling pretty damn glad I’d cashed that favor in, because I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to track them down without it. Not if his veil was good enough to get past Saori with ease.

“There’s a reason Silas sent me.”

“Why’s that?” I asked. “Just out of curiosity. I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I called him.”

Lily looked at me for a few moments. I got the distinct impression that she was deciding how honest to be in her answer. Eventually, the vampire said, “I’m sort of a security consultant. I was born right as computers were becoming prevalent, you see. First generation to grow up using them.”

She was my age, then, or maybe slightly older. Given that she also looked the same age I did, she’d probably been dead longer than she’d been alive now.

“Silas was looking for someone in that age band?” I asked.

“Mm, yes and no.” Lily shrugged. “Silas is smart enough to see which way the wind is blowing. He knew that this technology was going to have a huge impact on the world. He also knew that he lacked the technical knowledge to use it effectively. He wanted someone with technical familiarity, but who had little attachment to the world, whose disappearance wouldn’t draw much attention. An actual networking researcher was out of the question.”

“Ahh,” I said. “But, say, a college student who knew how computers worked wouldn’t draw that kind of attention.”

“No. It was straightforward from there. He offered me power and immortality in trade for a decade of service.” She shrugged again. “I had no reason to leave after that term expired.”

I nodded. “Yeah, makes sense. Would you do it again if you had the choice?”

“Yes,” Lily said, with an immediacy and certainty that suggested she’d considered the question before and had no doubt about the answer. “Vampirism has its drawbacks, but I’m well suited to it. Another factor in why I was selected, I expect. Silas is too smart to antagonize the person telling him how his security and hunting patterns need updated.”

I snorted. “Yeah. If he hadn’t figured out that pissing off the Praetorian Guard is a bad idea by now I’d be deeply curious how he’s survived this long.” I paused. “Well. Existed. You know what I mean.”

Her lips twitched again, a faint, thin smile that faded almost immediately. I could feel the amusement in her aura as well, a stronger pulse of crimson, a faint sound like the putting my ear to a cup and listening to my own pulse. “I do. Language gets odd sometimes. In any case, that’s the gist of it.”

“I am glad to know you better,” I said, carefully avoiding actual thanks, and just as carefully keeping threat out of my tone. I was pretty sure direct thanks weren’t dangerous with vampires, but it seemed courteous to treat her with that sort of caution, respectful somehow. And it was a good habit to build, given I was apparently about to be meeting a whole lot of Sidhe and it was extremely dangerous to say thank you to the wrong fae. “Will you be going back to New York now?”

“Silas would be furious if I cut this short,” Lily said. “You bargained for up to a week. I’ll be in Pittsburgh for the remainder of that week. If you need something let me know; if not I’ll wait and then leave.”

Huh. I’d had Silas pegged as the type to see paying his debts as a matter of personal honor, rather than a transaction to be optimized. I wouldn’t have guessed it extended quite this far, though. Lily seemed to think he’d be actively upset with her unless she not only did what I’d asked, but did the maximum amount that applied, the most generous interpretation of what he’d promised me. That was…interesting.

I was starting to respect Silas more. He’d been this responsive to a cold call about a favor from almost twenty years ago, a debt he’d voluntarily taken on because of something I didn’t even mean to do. It wasn’t like I had any leverage on him, either; I was a nobody, irrelevant to the major players of the world. He was still this concerned with repaying that debt, and that was impressive to me. I could respect that sense of honor and desire to balance the scales.

I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was thinking about how much I could respect a vampire. Hell, Lily seemed actually pretty likable; she was friendly, intelligent, and seemed like an interesting person. I could see myself spending time with her for pleasure, and given that she was an undead monster who perpetuated her unnatural existence by consuming people’s life force, that felt a little…odd.

But it was where we were. So I just grinned at her, and said, “Actually, do you think you could give me a ride?”

Lily said yes. She did not lock the motel door behind her; she did not look back. I followed, pretended I didn’t see Thorn in the passenger footwell of her car, and went to talk to an entirely different kind of monster that I called my friend.

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