Outside Wrenn’s windows, beautiful chrysanthemum fireworks blossomed in the sky in blues, greens, reds, and purples. Booms followed, and lots of laughter from the street.
She’d chosen this particular realm because it reminded her of the Edinburgh of her memories—cobbled streets and strong, solid timber-and-brick buildings, though the streets here were narrower and the buildings stretched taller. Rich oranges and savory browns warmed every corner and gave the borough an autumnal harvest/Samhain feel. The fae here preferred the thickness of velvet and brocades and tended to dress as if they were the true royalty of the realm.
And tonight, they would be out and glammed up to the fullest extent of their gloriousness.
Wrenn buckled the top closures on her black boots, then zipped her black leather jacket. The fae of Oberon’s realms understood why a witch of unknown heritage had been allowed to live among them—her life with Victor Frankenstein had unlocked gifts of speed, strength, and stamina as well as her ability to see magic. She was also taller than most fae and mundanes alike, and remarkably durable.
When Robin had found her, he’d immediately recognized her potential, and Oberon had agreed.
It gave her a life in the Royal Guard, which in turn gave her training, access to a wealth of data for her searches, and worthwhile work.
Wrenn coiled her black hair into a knot and secured it with two sticks specially charmed to hold her thick, uncooperative locks up and out of her face. Like the rest of her body, her hair liked to stay ever-stalwart and unchanging, and would immediately return to its default cascade down her back the moment she set it free. Without access to fae hairdressers, she would have given up and shorn it off ages ago.
She fed her fish and placed her paladin star on her belt. Then she made her way into the Samhain celebrations gearing up all through Oberon’s Castle.
Some of the royals slapped their names on every single blade of grass and pebble in their territory—Titania’s Falls, for example, or the Titan River, which flowed through not just Titania’s lands, but pretty much every fae realm.
Maybe the King was mad his wife had named the river after herself. Maybe he wanted to outdo the intricately manifested shadows of Tokyo and Osaka built by the kami. Or maybe he was mad that the fae could not live in the real world alongside their mundanes the way the elves did. So he compensated.
King Oberon controlled the fae metropolis called Oberon’s Castle.
Goblins, brownies, pixies; gorgeous Seelie and terrifying Unseelie; changelings and every half-breed fae-born witch ever located by the Royal Guard—Oberon modernized his magicals and set them up adjacent to the mundane world in an interconnected, urbanized maze of interlocking realms.
Wrenn stepped across her building’s threshold into air thick with sparking fae magic. Pixies drew curlicue trails at eye level. A moose-antlered Unseelie hunter danced in the street despite his kind’s aversion to Oberon’s urbanization. Sprites twirled in dresses as gossamer as their wings. Satyrs pranced. The Seelie paraded in processions. And above it all, fireworks blazed and boomed.
And this was just Wrenn’s quiet, backwater home.
Tonight the world moved into the dark half of her year, the cold, dead part called winter. The entire planet crossed a threshold, and in doing so made all crossings easy. Anyone with enough fae blood could cross over into the mundane world with ease tonight if they so desired, and without paying a toll on the fae side.
Wrenn walked into the festivities. Crystalline laughter rose to her left. To her right, a tall, muscular male fae stripped off his shirt before lifting a smaller, curvy pink female into the air. A small band of drunken domestic hobgoblins, all carrying steins of sweet-smelling mead, sang out a well-harmonized chorus of “Ah great lady Queen, oh our divine comedy be seen,” as they stumbled by.
Wrenn pulled out her phone and checked the contacts list she’d transferred from the pixie vellum. The murdered sprite had been from a realm called Applebottom, an adorable place of twinkling bluebells, fluffy clouds, and talking squirrels in pantaloons whose entire purpose was to turn the realm into a civilization sized for rodents, from root to crown of the realm’s grand apple trees.
It also happened to be sized for sprites, and wasn’t a place the six-foot-tall Wrenn should be stomping around after dark. Especially Samhain evening.
But there was another option.
If Wrenn wanted to find leads, she needed to head into the heart of Oberon’s Castle—Oberon’s actual castle. Lords and ladies would be about, and other high-powered fae, which meant she’d have access to their many servants.
And the odds of her finding a talkative sprite were much higher.
She did a mental check on the slight tingling along the Celtic tattoos circling both forearms just above her wrists like a pair of wide, intricate silver cuffs. The tattoos acted as anchors—wallets, really—for any non-work-related enchantments and tokens she wished to carry.
She might be a witch, but her magicks were limited and mostly protective. She could shield herself from a lot of what was tossed at her, be it magic or a punch. She couldn’t enchant or enthrall, or even hit someone or something with much of a jolt.
So she had to buy enchantment tokens. Some were simple lidding magic she used so she didn’t spill her coffee. Some were tracers for situations where she didn’t want to use official enchantments from her star. But mostly they were tokens to pay for her Heartway use in a way that didn’t open her soul.
Even though the Heartway was a public transportation system, it was still fae, and it demanded an exchange. Most fae paid with a little bit of their magicks. Some witches did, also. But Wrenn didn’t want to deplete her inherent shielding magic any more than she wanted to allow the Heartway to take as it pleased from her psyche.
Letting others into her head—even if that other was a systemic magic and not a person—was not… comfortable. And after her little intrusive visitation from Victor earlier, the last thing she wanted tonight was to give the systemic magic of the fae more access to her deepest wounds.
She counted one tingle. One token. She had been planning on stopping yesterday on her way home but forgot when she got her hands on the case files spread out on her kitchen table. And now, this late and on Samhain evening, refilling her tattoos would be difficult.
Fireworks exploded down the street and the boom rolled through the air like a pressure front before a particularly strong spell manifested. It washed over her, wince-inducing and amplifying and crackling like electricity. The entire street brightened for a split second and all the ambient magic—all the wisps around the dancing sprites, all the aurora-like sheets trailing the Seelie parading through the streets—howled.
Wrenn pinched her eyes closed and reflectively grabbed her ears as the wave’s crackle rolled by. She blinked and willed her eyes to focus through the blue-white haze left behind by the spell and—
Victor, she thought.
No more flashbacks! she yelled in her own head even though she knew better. She wasn’t having a flashback. Not like the one she’d had in her kitchen. Victor wasn’t here. Nor were his demons. She was on the street in the fae realm she called home. Fae partied all around her, happy and boisterous and full of glee.
This was not a place of obvious danger.
Yet her body braced for the possibility of the danger that welled up around her flashbacks. The loss of control. The semi-blackouts. The ragings and the screams.
She was terrifying to everyone around her when she flashed back, and she couldn’t do that on the street. On Samhain. Why had she come out here in the first place?
Someone put a hand on her shoulder. “Wrenn?”
Wrenn whipped around.
Rich raised her hands. “You shouldn’t be out here.” She stood in front of Wrenn in the sturdy pants and black leather bustier over a spotless white blouse she always wore while tending bar. Behind her, a warm glow poured through the grand window of her tavern and framed Rich’s semi-controlled blaze of red hair.
Rich and her partner Lush were both beautiful women—both red-haired, though Rich’s hair was more red than orange—and both half-fae witches who often didn’t get a lot of respect from the full fae in the area.
Rich shouldn’t be out in the reverie any more than Wrenn.
Nor should Wrenn be standing in front of the tavern.
All the buildings in her neighborhood faced the same street. Turn a corner, and you were back on Main Street, just in a different area. The whole cross-section hatchwork of the magic had been confusing for about three decades until she’d figured out the underlying geometry.
Yet here she was.
Samhain clearly had decided to slap Wrenn across the face the moment she stepped outside. Why, though? The visions weren’t a new manifestation with a festival, but they were coming faster and stronger than she’d expected when she’d decided to step out of her apartment.
Rich watched a Seelie couple stroll by. She blinked a few times as if being outside made her nervous. “Come in.” She looked up and down the street, as if watching for the cops even though Wrenn was the local Royal Guard.
How had Wrenn gotten to the tavern? Was this a manifestation of her flashbacks, the same as when she found herself standing over her case files with a towel in her hand? Maybe Rich wasn’t real, yet the perfect scent combination of roasting meats and warmed breads flowed out of the door. Wrenn inhaled deeply, centering herself.
Rich peered into her eyes. “Lush is having strong visions, too,” she whispered. “We both are.”
So it wasn’t just Wrenn.
“You okay?” Rich touched Wrenn’s arm.
Empathy was a commodity among the fae, and real caring was as rare and precious as gold. It was also more likely to happen among the witches.
Like Lush, Rich was a witch fathered by a fae and born to a mundane woman. Wrenn’s height and strength fueled rumors that she was a witch with elf ancestry. She didn’t know. No one knew, but the rumor did give some of the more annoying fae pause.
The magic around Rich flared outward from her like a roiling ball of reddish heat. She shuddered and blinked, then rubbed her forehead. The streetlamp flickered. The lights in the tavern brightened and buzzed. Rich looked up, frowned, and shifted how she held her shoulders.
The reddish magical heat around her danced up and into the air, and the lights went back to normal. “Sorry. Hot flash.”
“S’okay,” Wrenn said. The hot flash thing happened to all the witches in Oberon’s Castle. Except for Wrenn. Not a lot of hot to flash when you woke up every morning with cold skin.
Rich chuckled. “Got to pay the rent somehow, huh?”
In the real world, that heat often caused the witch to overheat in mind and body. But in the connected realms of Oberon’s Castle, a spellwork infrastructure siphoned off any flare-up before it hurt anyone.
Wrenn had long wondered where all that witch heat went. Still, without the siphoning, Rich and Lush would live vastly different lives, if they lived at all.
Rich waved her toward the door.
Some patrons played throwing games in the back. Some talked boisterously at the tables. All buzzed as they partied away the last of the year’s light before winter officially hit.
Wrenn followed Rich through the crowd and sat at the bar. Rich ducked behind and picked up the enchanted, always-full decanter of the tavern’s signature spiced coffee.
She poured out a mug. “You look cold still.” She waved her hand over the mug and a containment spell formed a spill-proof lid over the steaming liquid, then she pushed it toward Wrenn. “It’s on the house.”
Wrenn frowned. “You know, if I could figure out how to help with the flashes, I would,” she said.
Rich leaned against the counter. “We know.” Her eyes narrowed. “You had another flashback, didn’t you?” She shook her head. “And Samhain’s making it worse, isn’t it?”
Wrenn’s frown deepened. Sometimes witches knew more than they had a right to.
Rich stood straight and picked up her cloth again. She nodded toward the back room, and presumably Lush. “Lots of us witches have issues, Wrenn. You need to get yours settled or they will eat you up.”
Wrenn shrugged and took the coffee. “Yeah.” Her witchness would eat her up in a wholly different way than any of the other witches in the realm.
Rich tapped her finger on the smooth wood of the countertop. “Hmm.” She went back to wiping the bar, but stopped and stared into the tavern’s main room. “You should go home,” she said.
Yes, they should both be following the rules. “I have a case.” She moved away from the counter so she could tap her paladin star.
Rich continued to stare at the patrons in the main room. “Hmm,” she said again.
Wrenn turned around and scanned the fae gathered around the tables and in the game rooms.
There, at a back table, a kelpie shimmered pale green in the low glow along the back wall. He sat alone in the shadows sipping at a pint, with one arm on the back of his chair and his legs out as if he were looking to trip the waitstaff. He wore a black kilt—they always wore black kilts—and a tight-fitting black polo shirt. He’d half-heartedly swept his black locks back from his face, and one still fell onto his forehead, giving him a psychotic Clark Kent look.
He wasn’t the most beautiful variation of the baseline kelpie look that she’d seen, but he was handsome enough with the standard kelpie strong jaw and five o’clock shadow. They all were. Kelpies were pretty much identically ideal in their features, fantastic to behold and bewitching, but they were murderous dark fae.
They mostly stayed in Titania’s realms, but one or two came into Oberon’s Castle during festivals. They rarely caused overt problems—dark fae were watched—but that didn’t mean this one was behaving himself. He might just be out on a Samhain jaunt, but Wrenn suspected not.
She looked back at Rich.
“He’s…” Rich blinked. “He’s been here all evening,” she said.
She blinked again.
Wrenn looked back at the kelpie, then at Rich and her continued blinking. She shook slightly and went back to wiping at the bar.
Somewhere in the back, a group of fae broke into song. Near the door, another laughed. The kelpie sat in the shadows sprawled out like a bored child, watching it all.
Wrenn looked back at Rich, who smiled. “Need a refill?” she asked as if she’d forgotten that she’d just filled Wrenn’s mug.
Which she might have. Wrenn looked back at the kelpie.
The bastard winked.
He’d enthralled Rich to ignore him.
“Want me to get rid of the kelpie?” Wrenn would have to be careful. A kelpie who felt slighted would always look for revenge. They were as petty as boggarts in that respect.
Rich nodded, blinked again, then went back to her wiping.
Wrenn stood. She smoothed her jacket, made sure her paladin star was visible, and walked toward the kelpie’s corner.
He didn’t look at her when she pulled out a chair. He sipped his pint, watched the satyrs tossing hatchets in the back room, and puffed out his chest. He set down his mug and looked up at her expectantly.
She dropped her hand to her Paladin star without saying a word.
Something was off about this kelpie. He wasn’t exuding the charm and charisma that normally acted as their lure.
This kelpie was cold.
“Nae witches out on Samhain.” He returned to staring at the game players in the back room and didn’t look at her. “Company policy.”
Something about her time with Victor kept Wrenn from being read as witch by other magicals. Robin speculated it was the same interference that kept them from reading her magical heritage, and also why she didn’t overheat the same way the vast majority of witches did, no matter whose magic they semi-wielded.
So to this kelpie, she should have read as mundane. Yet she didn’t.
He looked up at her and smiled.
Fangs.
“Out vampire huntin’ tonight, darlin’?” he asked.