Chapter Eighteen

TY’S SLEEP HADN’T been disturbed either by surprise assailants or bad dreams. Thankfully, he’d never been bothered by nightmares. Perhaps he had too limited an imagination, or lower brain activity, but either way, he was pretty happy about it. He had enough shit to deal with while he was awake.

After waking up that afternoon, he’d made a few trips to get everything they needed to go through with their plan, including a change of clothes for Bas. They’d left all their personal belongings, as well as some of Cary’s things, in their respective rooms at the Venetian.

Ty had wanted to set out that evening and drive through the night, but Bas was still feeling weak after yesterday’s exertions, so Ty reluctantly agreed to give him more time to recuperate, pushing their departure to the middle of the night. He was too agitated to rest any more himself and resorted to chain-smoking while staring out of the window instead.

He was taking a hell of a risk waiting for so long. Tony might not be as patient, and it was Cary who was bound to pay the price for Ty’s overconfidence. But the board had already been set, and there was nothing more Ty could do, other than go through with his scheme and hope for the best. He had to, for Cary’s sake.

After taking turns in the bathroom and another quick shower, Ty and Sebastian went down to the car. Ty flipped on the radio to catch the late local news, but even though there were jumbled reports of a disturbance at the Venetian hotel and casino the previous day, no particular details (like a description of persons of interest or their vehicle) had been issued. All they had to do was keep a low profile and avoid any run-ins with the cops—which was Ty’s usual modus operandi.

“I need coffee,” Bas grumbled as he slid into the passenger’s seat.

“There’s nothing around here you’d want to drink,” Ty said, setting up the GPS. “There should be a gas station and a 7-Eleven a few miles down the road. We can get you something there.”

“Wouldn’t it be just the thing if it were my last day on Earth and all I had to drink was convenience-store coffee,” Bas bemoaned, slumping dramatically in his seat.

“Who’s cranky now?”

Bas huffed as Ty pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed for the highway. Ty couldn’t help but think back to the drive to Las Vegas, with Cary beside him. It already felt like a lifetime ago, the memories painted with guilt and nostalgia.

The darkness made it seem as if the road was stretching into nothingness. The stillness made it easy to sink back into his troubled thoughts. There had been a lot of things to do before everything was ready. Ty was familiar with the location he’d picked for the drop-off, but it had been years since he’d last been there. A lot could have changed since then, and the least he could do was learn as much as he could about the surrounding area online. No amount of Internet research beat actual reconnaissance, but there might not be enough time to do that properly, given they still had at least eight hours of driving ahead of them.

They ended up getting that coffee, although Ty would’ve preferred to skip it and just keep going. But he needed to fill up with gas anyway, so at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time. The coffee actually went a long way to calming him down, in lieu of a cigarette (Bas would flip on him if Ty tried smoking in the car). He’d been simmering ever since the phone call from AJ, and anger wasn’t the right mindset for handling a rigged hostage swap.

And there was another thing that had been bothering him for some reason, like an annoying mosquito buzz he couldn’t tune out even in the midst of the current shit storm.

“Hey, Bas?”

“Mmm?”

“What did you mean yesterday about me having an ‘ingrained Fae bargaining streak’?”

There was a long pause.

“I just meant you put a lot of weight on everybody getting their due,” Bas said finally, squirming a little in the passenger seat. He was examining his paper cup intently, avoiding meeting Ty’s eyes.

“I can tell when you’re shitting me,” Ty said, glancing sideways at him. “That’s not what you meant.”

“Okay, fine.” Bas put the nearly empty cup in the holder and looked at him. For once, his expression was serious, and Ty almost regretted starting the conversation in the first place, because he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Just promise me you won’t freak out.”

“That’s reassuring,” Ty muttered. No, he was definitely not going to like it.

“I know why Leland took you in.”

“What?” Ty looked at him sharply. When Leland found him, he tried his best to teach Ty the basics of magic practice and, what proved to be more important, how to steal without being caught. Leland hadn’t been an easy man to get along with. He’d been a strict teacher, and compromise wasn’t his strongest suit. But during those years, Ty had a sense of stability, and he’d learned so much that he didn’t mind the occasional punishment. And Ty couldn’t blame Leland for eventually turning him out for failing to live up to his standards. “He told me exactly why he took me in.”

Bas sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Somehow it looked a lot less dramatic than his usual theatrics. “Yes, yes, the ‘spark of potential,’ as he used to call it. But it wasn’t just that. Lots of people have the spark, and in most cases, it doesn’t amount to shit.”

“No kidding,” Ty muttered under his breath.

“The real reason he picked you up was because he saw you were Fae-touched.”

“I was…what?”

“You were stolen by the Fae as a baby and returned to the human world when you were a little boy. Leland thought that made you special. Inherently magical, or some such nonsense—maybe even able to communicate with the Faerie world. You know how obsessed Leland is with everything Fae.” Bas threw him a quick glance and shrugged, as if he couldn’t fathom the fascination, even though Ty knew Bas was no less familiar with the subject. “In any case, he was wrong. You proved to be no different than any regular human child. That’s why he was so disappointed. He said that must have been why they’d returned you to the human world—because you were so useless they hadn’t even bothered raising you as a slave. His words, not mine.”

Ty gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. He regretted starting this conversation in the car, because the white noise currently filling his ears was hardly conducive to safely driving at seventy miles per hour.

“How do you know that?” he asked. His mouth felt dry, and it wasn’t because of the over-roasted coffee he’d had earlier.

“Leland had come to me for help a few times,” Bas said. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “We used to be closer. You know, before he treated you like a dick. Anyway, he told me about it all one day, and—”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Ty cut him off. He wasn’t quite sure he believed what he was hearing—the part about him being abducted by faeries. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t been known to happen. He’d heard enough stories about changelings and people being carried off to the other realm. But he didn’t remember any of that. Wouldn’t he have retained some recollection of such a fantastic place?

“It’s kind of a big thing to spring on someone, you know?” Sebastian said, a touch plaintively. “It just never came up.”

Ty bit off a caustic response. Getting mad at Bas wasn’t going to change anything. He didn’t even know who he was truly angry with—Bas, for keeping this secret from him for so long; Leland, for treating him as either a curiosity or a means to an end and discarding him like a pair of old socks while deeming him unworthy of the truth; or some unknown Fae he still wasn’t convinced even existed, for depriving him of the family he’d always yearned for.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Bas said, turning to look at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Who were my real parents? he wanted to ask. Where was I born, and when? Time flowed differently in Faerie. Even different parts of the realm weren’t synchronized with each other, much less with the human world. If he’d indeed spent his early years there, there was no telling when exactly he’d been born. It could have been decades and decades ago. It could be that none of his biological relatives were still alive.

Bas shook his head. “No. I’m not sure how much he knew about it, really, and he isn’t the man to confide in anybody even if he did possess more information.”

Ty took a deep breath, willing himself to keep his eyes on the road and his mind focused on the task at hand. A million questions buzzed around in his head, blurring his vision. But now wasn’t the time to try to make sense of it all. Whatever the truth was, it had lain dormant for years. It could wait a bit longer—unlike Cary, whose life expectancy could be measured in hours. Ty would have a chance to grill Sebastian (and maybe even Leland, if he could find him) further when it was all over—assuming he’d make it out alive.

“I swear to God, you can be such an asshole sometimes,” Ty muttered. Just breathe and let it go, he reminded himself. They had a long drive ahead of them, and they should be using it to come up with a plan that wouldn’t backfire as spectacularly as their last one.

“But you love me anyway, darling,” Bas said, reclining back in his seat.

 

“THIS IS THE place?” Sebastian asked as he got out of the car and looked around.

The dirt road they’d driven up ran around a hill overlooking a tiny pond. A farmhouse stood on the top of the hill, its roof slightly askew and its wide wraparound porch sagging in places. It had been abandoned for quite some time; the fields around it were nothing but overgrown wilderness, bordering on a natural forest. A tractor and a stripped-down farm truck were rusting away on the slope of the hill, and pieces of machinery were strewn around them, nearly invisible in the tall grass. The red paint on the barn behind the house had turned brown with the years, and the entire structure looked ready to collapse at any moment. The sun had already risen, washing everything in a pink glow that made the overall shabbiness look slightly more picturesque.

There wasn’t another dwelling around for miles, as far as Ty recalled. The quiet, broken only by the chirping of birds and the rustle of wind in the grass, had a weird, hushed quality about it, but perhaps it only felt that way after the familiar urban bustle. Bas took a few steps toward the rickety house and stopped, eying the porch suspiciously.

“Why did you pick it?”

Ty slammed the car door, the loud sound spooking the handful of water birds that occupied the puddle-like pond.

“It’s remote,” he said, coming to stand beside Bas.

“Very convenient for hiding the bodies. You’re doing Giordano a service.”

“He’d never go for anything more public.” Ty started for the house, and after a reluctant pause, Bas followed him. “This works to both our advantage. Besides, I know this place. It was my first solo gig after splitting with Leland.”

“Here?”

“Yes.” Ty went up the stairs that led to the porch, running his hand along the wooden rail. His skin prickled with the anguish and screams soaked into the old, sun-bleached wood. It always seemed strange to him that for all his magic, Sebastian could never sense objects like he did, could never read the imprints left in them by past owners and events. It was a gift of sorts, he supposed. Or maybe this was what being Fae-touched felt like, now that he thought about it. “It was one of the spots where Mason Shear held his gatherings.”

“The cultist?” Bas asked. He ascended the stairs gingerly. Perhaps he couldn’t sense past impressions as well as Ty, but he was uncomfortable, and Ty bet it wasn’t just worry over the possibility of the decrepit house collapsing on them.

“Yes. It was after he was killed in the police raid. I was hired by the relatives of one of his victims to search for her personal belongings that had been used in his rituals.”

“That must have been fun.”

“Considering none of his victims were found in one piece, it really wasn’t.”

Ty pushed open the front door, which creaked on its hinges. The interior welcomed them with the dank smell of rotting wood and mold. A thick layer of dust covered the floor and what was left of the broken furniture, and shards of glass were still piled under smashed windows. Aside from the advanced state of disrepair, nothing set the farmhouse apart from any other abandoned homestead in the area. At least, what it would appear like to any outsider.

“What now?” Bas asked, looking around with such distaste it was easy to forget he’d been living in a basement for the better portion of the last decade.

“Now we have some setting up to do,” Ty said. “Let’s see if we can arrange a warm welcome for Giordano and his posse.”