* * *
I t wasn’t long before Frank returned to the shop. I hadn’t heard the bell on the front door jingle, but Bubbles’s barking shook the building. It wasn’t the hostile barking that said “Yes, I’m going to eat your face now,” but it was loud enough to wake the dead.
I smelled the pizza Sam had asked Frank to pick up. The smell wafted up the stairs before he crested the top, Bubbles trotting along behind him. “Two pies from Talayna’s and a dinner salad to go.” Frank placed the boxes on the coffee table before slipping into the oversized chair beside Sam. I really thought they would have grown out of the cute stage at some point, but it didn’t seem it was ever going to end. We were all just learning to live with it.
“Park is still tied up,” Frank said. “Casper was better for a while, but she’s not doing so hot now.”
“Who is Casper?” Alexandra asked.
We filled her in about Park’s sniper. It didn’t take long to recite what we knew because, in all honesty, we didn’t know much.
“Drake,” Alexandra said. “A fairy named Drake, wearing the armor of the Mad King?”
“We saw it ourselves,” Zola said. “Ah understand that armor isn’t a familiar sight, yes?”
“That would be an understatement,” Alexandra said.
Aideen nodded. “Casper’s an asset to Park. Would you help me rid her of the remaining poison?”
“That will drain us both,” Alexandra said, rubbing the palm of one hand with her thumb. “I don’t think it would be wise to be in a weakened state under the circumstances.”
“Then we won’t heal her completely,” Aideen said. “We’ll remove the poison from her body. We’ll let her heal the rest on her own.”
Alexandra contemplated that for a moment before nodding. “Understand that I’ll do this to strengthen your alliance with the military.”
“I know,” Aideen said.
I pulled a slice of pizza out of the box and dropped it onto a paper plate. The rest of the group followed suit. We were silent for a time, and I wasn’t sure if everyone else was pondering Alexandra’s words as I was. Initially, they sounded cold, but I understood the logic behind them. We needed a stronger alliance with the military. Or one of Nudd’s gambits, or the queen’s, was going to succeed.
“Oh, wow,” Alexandra said as she finished snarfing down her crust. “Where is that pizza from?”
“Across the street,” Frank said. “It’s not as good as an actual New York pie, but it’s a damn fine substitute. Place called Talayna’s.”
“It’s a wonder you haven’t eaten there,” Zola said. “You’ve known Damian more than five minutes.”
I grinned at Zola.
“I have been to the fudge shop,” Alexandra said.
“That’s all that matters,” Foster said.
“How are we going to get back in to see Casper without Park?” I asked.
The fairies all looked at each other, and a slow smile lifted the corners of Alexandra’s lips. “You’ll wait here.”
“We know where she is, now,” Aideen said. “There’s no need for you to return with us.”
“Foster should stay here, too,” Zola said. “They’re already suspicious of fairies that look like him.”
“I won’t be seen,” Foster said.
“Zola’s right,” Aideen said. “You stay here and help Damian eat that pizza.”
Foster frowned. “I am hungry.” He lopped a piece of pepperoni off with his sword and started munching on it. I winced at the thought of where that sword had been in the last few hours. “I’ll do it,” Foster said. “Though it’s a harsh sacrifice.”
Aideen gave him a knowing smile. “We shouldn’t be gone long. I know where Casper is. I’ll guide Alexandra there.”
I stuffed another bite of pizza into my mouth and nodded.
“Park isn’t there,” Frank said. “Don’t get yourself caught.”
“We’ll be careful,” Alexandra said. “Aideen and I are better about strategizing. We don’t simply stab everyone when we first meet them.”
Foster gave her a flat look.
Alexandra and Aideen made their way to the stairs and were gone a moment later. I turned to Frank, who had just taken such a giant bite of pizza I thought he might choke.
“Where’s Park?” Zola asked.
Frank chewed his pizza for another thirty seconds or so before he swallowed and finally said, “Talking to one of Casper’s squad’s lieutenants.” He frowned and shook his head. “He may actually be talking to the major.”
“Didn’t he say it was the major’s decision to have the tanks sent to the city?” Sam asked.
Frank nodded. “Yeah. He did.”
“That could be very good,” Zola said. “Park is a direct line to the major. He may have influence.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
Foster nodded and chewed vigorously on another piece of pepperoni. “And the armor of the Mad King looked a lot like mine. It would be easy for someone to mistake if they weren’t Fae. And it would be easy for a Fae to mislead someone if they wished.”
Zola frowned. “That’s not reassuring.”
“Delicate situation,” Frank said, “any way you cut it.”
“And a good reason to keep Aeros close,” Zola said.
“I would’ve thought the military would be much more trusting of Aeros now,” Sam said. “After he helped stop the harbinger by the Arch.”
“Police force is,” Frank said. “Some of the patrolmen were on the bridge. They saw a lot of what happened.”
“Hopefully it won’t take something so drastic,” Zola said, “to earn the respect of the men with the tanks.”
* * *
Frank and Sam left after we finished the pizza. Foster was wrangling Bubbles downstairs, leaving Zola and I around the heavy coffee table. Zola flipped through the pages of Phillip’s old journal, smiling at something on one before wincing at some unholy nightmare on another.
“You still miss him?” I asked.
Zola nodded slowly. “Ah do, but it’s complicated.”
“He did some pretty bad shit,” I said.
“I did some pretty bad shit, too, Damian,” she said. “The difference is, he never stopped.”
I turned the page of the Book that Bleeds, its blood pooling in the pizza box on the coffee table. As much as it had creeped me out the first time I’d seen the book bleed, now that I knew it wouldn’t leave any stains, it didn’t bother me so much.
“Have you found anything new?” Zola asked.
I shook my head. “There are some sections about the Wandering War.” I rifled back a few pages and turned the book toward Zola. “It’s not as thorough as I’d like, but there is a myth about the Mad King.”
Zola skimmed the page and frowned. “What does it say?”
“You can’t read it?”
“Some of it is clear,” Zola said, squinting at the book, “but some of the lines shimmer. Like the text is hidden behind another spell.”
“That’s how the Black Book used to look. Why this page?”
“It’s perhaps your bloodline. It can be hard to tell with all the magic.”
I spun the book back toward me, flinging a bit of ghostly blood into the air, where it dissipated in an instant.
“We can ask Aideen when they get back,” Zola said.
“Foster might know, too,” I said.
A wry smile wrinkled Zola’s lips. “We want information. We don’t want them to stab the book.”
“He does like to stab things,” I said with a nod.
We studied in silence for a time, interrupted by the occasional bark of the cu sith downstairs, but otherwise left alone among the towering bookcases and musty scent of the old tomes. I hadn’t found many writings on the Wandering War. The fairies didn’t seem to be fond of putting their history down on paper. Perhaps it was harder to skirt the truth that way, which was a skill they prided themselves on.
Nixie had told me there were libraries, more in the past, but some still stood. One of them was in Nudd’s court, a chamber guarded as closely as the king’s life. Now that was a sight I would have liked to have seen. Vik and the vampires had some old books in their archives, but I imagined that the fairies likely had tomes that were much, much older.
A passage in the Book that Bleeds that was hidden from Zola’s eyes and not from mine. It didn’t seem to make sense. And when it came to the Fae, anything that didn’t seem to make sense always earned my attention.
“This entire book reads like modern English,” I said.
“We know enough to know that it shows a language most comfortable to the reader,” Zola said.
“Right,” I said, “I understand that, but then why are some of these passages either in old English or just disjointed gibberish?”
Zola frowned. “It may be as simple as the fact its spell has worn in places. If it’s like Ward’s … well, wards,” she said with a smirk. “The erasure of one small section can wreak havoc on the whole.”
I ran my finger across the thin paper and nodded. That actually made quite a bit of sense. I didn’t know how the magic worked in the book, but if each page had its own ward for its own binding, it made sense that some pages might be jumbled and others would be clear. But why was it the pages on the Fae? Had someone revisited them more than any other pages? It was a mystery, and I’d had more mysteries try to kill me over the past few years than I cared to remember.
“I bet Cara would’ve known.”
“Yes,” Zola said with a sad smile.
Some days I missed my friend a great deal.