I was sprawled across the floor of my third-floor sanctum, riding out the exhaustion from storing and casting not one, not two, but three healing spells. It had taken three healing spells to patch us up after our fight with the recarnates. Since Brand and I needed to be mobile in addition to able-bodied, I’d doctored each spell with the magical equivalent of caffeine, at the cost of occasional junkie twitches.
Sleep would have to wait. Matters had moved beyond our caution. Ashton—who’d bailed on us as soon as he could back at the hospital— would talk, which meant our investigation had moved into the open. The plan now was to dress like slumming scions; trawl the clubbing district for the principality known as Ciaran; and see if Quinn’s hints could lead us to Addam Saint Nicholas.
Ciaran wasn’t answering the phone number I had for him. According to sources, he had been holding court at a bar called Cubic Dreams in the wee hours of the morning. Brand had headed downstairs to gear up and prep Matthias. Against whatever meager shred of paternal sensibility I may have had, I was listening to Quinn and bringing Matthias along with us.
“I talked with Amy Beige,” Brand said from the stairwell.
Amy Beige was a contact who worked in city healthcare. “Quinn,” I said.
“I apologized about the wyvern. So she told me he’s alive. That’s all I know. His Shield went down, but hospital security showed up.”
Brand walked barefoot over to his corner of the sanctum and opened the trunk where he kept his special knives. I stared down at the white-gold sigil in my hand—newly minted with a Fire spell—and wondered why I was so grateful that a kid I’d just met was unharmed.
“You kissed me on the eyebrow once. And you’ll hit the bully with a barstool after he calls me a freak.”
“You okay?” Brand asked.
“This case is getting weird.”
“No shit,” Brand said. “Were you able to get Lord Tower on the phone?”
I shook my head. “Went to voicemail.”
I put the ring back on my finger and made a fist around it. “I can’t figure out what happened in that basement, Brand. A recarnate using spells? And leading other recarnates around?”
“Have you figured out what kind of magic it was using?”
“That’s just it. There is no figure out. It’s like asking where the fourth side of a triangle goes. New magical disciplines just don’t pop up. I get that the Dead Man was using a variation of death magic. I get that he had no sigils on him, or at least none that I felt. I get that he was using spells, actual spells. But I can’t see the line that connects those dots.”
“People can cast spells without sigils.”
“Sure, after they’ve spent their lives studying how to do it. Even then, they’d never get the range and strength that the Dead Man did. He should have burned out after that first telekinetic blast, forget what he did with the roof.”
Brand said nothing while he lined up knives. He’d broken into his most expensive arsenal. All of them black volcanic glass, inlaid with coral and vulcanized coal. Obsidian, coral, and coal were three substances that had a very adverse effect on the defenses of magical creatures. It had to do with their elemental nature—coral formed in the ocean, obsidian in lava flows, and coal deep in the earth.
Brand muttered, “. . . knew how to fight.”
“Who? Ashton?”
“Ashton’s a douche. Did you see all those fancy flourishes? He’s lucky he didn’t get gutted on the first counterattack. No, I meant the recarnates. The fucking zombies. They knew how to fight, and at least one of them knew how to use a firearm.” Guns were anathema in our culture. You didn’t bring bullets to a magic fight; it bruised our sense of spectacle. You needed a special dispensation to even own guns, like Brand had.
Brand said, “So it begs the fucking question—whose bodies were they? There were twelve of them, including the guy you’ve so cleverly tagged the Dead Man. How can twelve fucking bodies go missing and get raised on an island? And recarnates don’t just appear, do they? They get summoned, right? Which leads us right back to the question—who really kidnapped Addam?”
“I hate that we have to bring Matthias with us.”
“Don’t tell him that. He’s going to ask you to slow dance.” When Brand saw the look on my face, he rolled his eyes. “What? You didn’t know he’s crushing?”
“On me? Why me? Maybe he’s crushing on you,” I said, somewhat panicked.
“I stuck his head in a toilet. You straddled his body and fought off a gargoyle.”
“Godsdamnit,” I said.
Brand’s humor faded. “Do you really think it’s a bad idea to bring him with us?”
I shrugged. “I think . . . Quinn is the real thing. I really think he’s got the gift. And I don’t think he’s lying. If he says Matthias has a role to play, then Matthias has a role to play. I just don’t like it.”
“I’m pretty damn sure that before this is over, we’ll have plenty of other things not to like. We haven’t even talked about Ciaran yet.”
I couldn’t hide a flinch. Arcana were bad enough. Take away any sense of rules or purpose, and what you had left was something much like Ciaran.
“Oh, and I pulled our clubbing clothes out of storage,” Brand added, and ducked his face before I could fire a look at him. Brand liked us to dress for our environment; but when it came to his capacity to show skin, he was far more Atlantean than I was.
It was going to be a long night.
The first thing I did after looking in the mirror was to grab an ankle-length duster and button it all the way up. The clubbing outfit consisted of a black, mesh shirt and sheer, translucent black slacks. Very translucent.
Matthias came running out of the guest bathroom as soon as he heard my footsteps on the stairwell. He was wearing a short-sleeved bowling shirt with three buttons open, and his pale chest swirled with a fae sheen of dark greens, blues, and purples.
He held up a tube of medicine. “It’s heat rub,” he said. “I found it in the cabinet. I was thinking that I could put it on your shoulder. You hurt it, right?”
“Um,” I said. “Maybe later. We’re heading out. See you downstairs.”
Brand was waiting by the car, dressed in a leather gladiator harness and tight, gray pants. The first thing he said was, “A coat? A fucking tweed coat?”
“Have we met?” I asked.
“Ladies and gentlemen: Rune, the other white meat.”
I glared at him and took off the coat. I opened the door of our beat-up old Saturn and threw the coat in the back seat.
Five minutes later, Half House was locked up, and we headed out. It was drizzling by then, and dagger-shaped clouds drifted past the face of the moon. The moisture stirred up the smell of salt from miles away. I turned out of our cul-de-sac and merged into city traffic.
Matthias said, “Maybe I should borrow a gun?”
“Maybe fucking not,” Brand said.
“Just stay close to us,” I said to the rearview mirror. “And, hey, should we call you something other than Matthias?”
“Like a code name?” Matthias asked.
“No, Matthias. Not like a code name. I never asked you if you had a nickname.”
“Oh,” he said. His mouth opened and closed, as if the invitation baffled him. “I suppose . . . I once had a friend. She called me Max. I liked that.”
He said it like the idea of a friend was just as unusual as picking his own nickname. It made something inside me twinge—pity or conscience, I’m not sure which.
“Max,” I said. “Max it is.”
Cubic Dreams operated out of a five-story building called the Otis. Translocated from Washington State, it was once a skid-row hotel frequented by drug addicts and sex offenders. It must have been beautiful in its prime. It still had the bone structure of a great beauty, weighed down by decades of bad choices.
The bar was on the top floor, and it vibrated with music and energy. If I hadn’t known in advance it was a human bar, I would have spotted it the moment I walked through the door. The management catered to tourists with glaring displays of parlor tricks. The air was filled with will-o’-the-wisps and mist, and magicked bubbles that burst into showers of random debris. In the minute we lingered at the doorway, I suffered spatters of beach sand, snow, green glitter, and inchworms.
The bartender gave us a glance as we approached, and he swiped his way toward us with a dirty rag. He was very handsome and not wearing a shirt. He said, “Hey, love. What’s your poison?”
“Something with an antidote,” I joked, lamely, because he was handsome and not wearing a shirt. Brand rolled his eyes, so I cleared my throat and said, “A bottle of diet raspberry ginger ale for me. Spartacus will have bottled water. Matthias? Max?”
“A beer?” Max suggested.
“Nope.”
He sighed. “A virgin daiquiri.”
The bartender slapped our bottles on the counter. As he turned to make Max’s drink, Brand and I watched like hawks. It was never a smart idea to get anything without a seal in a New Atlantis bar.
When I was convinced that he hadn’t doctored it, I let the bartender pass it toward Max. To Max’s delight, the bartender said, “On the house, cutie. Love the skin.”
In due course, I installed Max and Brand at a corner table, then went off to find where Ciaran was holding court.
A procession of rooms was packed with drunks and dancers. In one room, I passed a group of pale, young humans giggling in a corner and trying to speak Atlantean, which I’d heard was the new Klingon. In another room, a delirious woman had doused herself with the contents of a glow stick and was doing lopsided pirouettes. Radioactive-looking drops flew from her arms and speckled the crowd.
By the time I had gotten to the last room, I still hadn’t spotted Ciaran. I took a stool at a heart-shaped bar and ordered another soda, to see if he’d come to me on his own.
A middle-aged human ignored my scowl and sidled up. He didn’t peg me as an Atlantean—and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. In a distressingly short amount of time, I learned that he was on a business trip; that he ran the Atlantean fan club for the Hierophant; and that he liked wine coolers.
He started talking about the days that led up to the Atlantean World War. “It was my Where-Were-You-When moment,” he said. “Like how people used to talk about JFK? I still remember the moment I heard. God, everyone was so scared. Vampires and faeries were real. There was an Atlantis. I was in daycare, and the ladies who ran it were crying and talking in the corner. And then all of our mothers came and grabbed us, and took us home. My mother made us turn off the lights and hide in the basement. Can you believe that? She actually filled old milk containers with water, and made my father stop and buy as much canned food as he could afford. It was crazy. Like I said, it was my Where-Were-You-When moment.”
“Was it?” Ciaran whispered in his ear.
The man stiffened.
Ciaran said, “What about this: Where were you when you came to the attention of something far outside your comfort zone?”
The man’s thinning hair roots stood out against a now-pale scalp. Ciaran smiled and slid into a chair. He didn’t smile at the man, he smiled at parts of him: at the pulse on his neck, at his earlobe, at the dent in his lower lip. Ciaran said, “My, but what dreams are in your head, Gregory Roberts. They beg a closer look.”
The man’s hand went slack. His martini glass fell over without breaking. He stumbled away from us.
I said, “You just about done?”
Principalities were freelance powers, occupying a niche somewhere to the left of a sitting Arcana. But unlike Arcana, principalities were not bound by etiquette, rules, or predictable motivations. They were beings of indefinable power, amassed over centuries, who answered only to their own whims.
Ciaran had eyes that rippled with the appearance of light, like sun on moving water. He had dark-blue hair, lips as red as carnage, and an affinity for wild magic. Colors and texture had a nasty habit of changing around him, depending on his mood. I’ve seen him mess with wallpaper, portraits, and even, on one memorable occasion, a theater usher’s eyes.
As long as I’d known—and known of—Ciaran, he had profited in the service of secrets, selling them to those in need. He had a host of innate mind-fuck powers that aided his business, not the least of which was a touch of true seeing.
Saying I was eager to know why Quinn had sent me Ciaran’s way was a grim and curious understatement, like wondering if your microwave was hot enough to cook your cat, or whether a pair of scissors was sharp enough to cut off your finger.
“Bars and banks,” Ciaran swore, leaning away from the table so that he could get the full effect of my outfit. “Look at you, showing off your bits and bobs.”
“That’s just what I need to sleep at night, a compliment from you.” I tipped my chin at him. “Hello, Ciaran.”
“Rune. I was getting bored waiting. Quinn thought you’d be by sooner.”
If I hesitated, it wasn’t for long. I’d known the Tower too long to be shaken by people trying to startle me with unexpected information. “How is Quinn, then?”
“Just the way you left him. In a coma.”
Okay, maybe I had one or two startles left. “A coma? Quinn is in a coma? Brand talked with the hospital earlier. They said he was okay.”
“Ah, like magic!” Ciaran said in delight, just as I felt the warm, familiar presence of my Companion at my shoulder. “Speak his name, and he appears! And how are you, better half?”
“Quinn is in a coma?” Brand asked.
“Yes, he is, and I’m sure Rune will fill you in afterward. Shouldn’t you be watching that little blond thing you scarpered in with? Be a dear and give us some space.”
Brand said, “We’re on the Tower’s business, Ciaran, and fucking impatient about it. How did you speak to Quinn if he’s in a coma?”
The red, lacquered bar top turned coal black under Ciaran’s fingers. He smiled tightly at Brand and said, “Careful with your tone, boy.”
“Ciaran,” I said.
“All friends, all friends!” He widened his smile again. “My apologies, Companion. I didn’t mean to be rude. But, truly, I’ve never been very comfortable with threesomes. Someone always gets left out. Why don’t you go dance? Go dance and be merry.”
I felt the release of a sigil spell. It was directed at Brand.
I was half a second away from transmuting my wrist-guard when Brand simply turned and walked away.
“You mind-fucked him,” I said in a very quiet voice.
“Embarrassingly easy.”
“You’re scary, Ciaran,” I whispered, “but I can be scarier.”
“Oh, relax, Lord Sun. It’s only a trifle. You have my word—no harm has been done. He’ll simply enjoy himself.”
I didn’t care about his word. My rage was a real and growing thing. There were some lines you couldn’t easily cross with me, and mind control was one of them.
Ciaran said, “You are in a mood, aren’t you?”
“You’re going to want to paint between the lines for the rest of this conversation, Ciaran. I’m trying to find Addam Saint Nicholas, and I act on the Tower’s authority. Quinn Saint Nicholas sent me to you. Tell me what I need to do my job, and the Tower will compensate you.”
Ciaran waited a good ten seconds. Then he raised a hand for the bartender—a short Atlantean with Japanese mythology in her genetic cupboard—and said, “Parched.”
Since he’d blinked first, I humored him while he ordered absinthe. It was delivered in a tulip-shaped glass with a small tray of accoutrements. Ciaran separated out the slotted spoon, the chipped china saucer holding a large sugar cube, and a tiny carafe of ice water. The smell of anise clogged my nostrils.
“Addam Saint Nicholas,” Ciaran finally said. “I know him through Quinn. Quinn and I share certain gifts. I’m aware of your prejudices toward those of us who see, but even so, you must admit Quinn’s ability.”
“I do.”
“He’s the rarest type of seer. He can see probabilities. Now, I would hesitate to call his talent unreliable, but it would be apt to say that he sees so much that he’s not always able to make out the forest through the trees. I tell you this by way of disclaimer so that you don’t accuse me of riddles.”
“Ciaran, how did you talk to Quinn? How long has he been in a coma?”
“Since you left him. His Shield went down and the bad guys used concussion grenades. He has not regained consciousness. Quinn’s not exactly alarmed by his condition. He says, and I quote, that most of the time he wakes up, and sometimes there’s even cake.”
“How did you talk to him?” I growled.
Ciaran sucked absinthe off his thumb. “Dream-walking.”
“You dream-walk.”
“I have many hidden depths, little Arcana. Quinn, who is in a coma, reached out to me through the dream world. He and I had quite the chat, and then we put our heads together to see if we could get a better impression of where Addam is being kept.”
“Quinn said Addam was in a desert. Something about sand and broken glass? A dried-up river?”
“Put your thinking cap on,” Ciaran said. “I’ll even spot you more clues. Addam is within city limits, but he’s not on Nantucket soil. He is not in a pocket dimension or a phase.”
“Not on Nantucket soil, but in the city?” If he hadn’t mentioned pocket dimensions, it would have been my first guess. “Not on Nantucket soil, like, legally? Like embassy grounds?”
“Warmer. And Quinn tends to speak in metaphor. He didn’t say Addam was in a desert.”
I remembered something else. Quinn had said: You’re too caught up on the What and Who.The reason my mother can’t find Addam is a Where.
A metaphor.
Sand and broken glass.
“An hourglass,” I said. “A broken hourglass. Farstryke Castle. Godsdamnit, they’re keeping him in Farstryke Castle.”
Ciaran clapped without making a sound.
I said, “Wonderful. Just great. I need to find Brand. I’ll talk to Lord Tower about your compensation. And please answer your bloody phone if I call.”
Ciaran waited until I’d gotten out of my chair before he added, “Oh, and if Brand comes with you, he dies.”
I stopped.
I turned my head.
Ciaran said, with petty relish, “Every time. Quinn says that if Brand comes with you, he dies every time.”
My heart began skipping beats. I had accepted Quinn’s gift as real, and I didn’t think Ciaran was lying, which meant that this was real—it was real, it was real, and the what-ifs began to tear great, meaty strips out of my brain. What if I’d figured out where Addam was on my own? What if I’d never had to meet Quinn or speak to Ciaran, and never heard the warning? What if I’d taken Brand? What if I’d lost him?
The shock began to prickle and itch, then it woke into rage.
My Atlantean Aspect burst to life. Whatever was in my eyes was nothing as simple as a glow, though. A light flared, as bright as burning magnesium. Ciaran’s pupils dilated, and he threw up his hands. The people closest, the people who could see whatever had become of my face, backed away in a dramatic spill of drinks and chairs.
“Tell me,” I whispered, and the words carried like rifle shot.
Ciaran squeezed his eyes shut and made an open-handed gesture of compliance. He said, only a little shakily, “Quinn told me to pass along the warning. I’m not sure what rosy future Quinn prefers to see, but in the one he likes best, you and Brand are dear to him. He said that if Brand accompanies you into the castle, he will not leave it alive. Quinn was very clear about the parameters of his seeing: Brand can’t come into the castle with you.”
The light died. My Aspect fled.
I turned and left.
I stood in the hallway for a long time.
There was a bulletin board with personal adverts for used futons, roommates, and anonymous sex.
There was a lithe, brown-skinned fae with corn silk for hair, waiting outside a closed bathroom door.
A human rocked back and forth on the ground. He was dressed in an expensive suit and had shallow cuts crisscrossing the tops of his bare feet.
I stood in the hallway for a long time, watching everything and nothing, until I remembered how to breathe again.
Max was slumped at a corner table. Brand wasn’t with him. His slack-jawed attention was on Cubic Dream’s dance floor. I’d started to look that way myself when he whispered, “Brand’s dancing.”
The dance floor was tiny, but, even so, a space had formed around my Companion.
Man and woman alike watched him move. He was aware of neither. His eyes were closed in something not unlike rapture, as his head swung in and out of rays of colored gel lights. He danced like he was under attack—like the world was coming at him from all sides.
Tears bit the back of my eyes. There was a word for a death prophecy. It was called a Grim Omen. Brand was going to be furious as hell, but there was no way he was setting foot near Farstryke Castle.
Next to me, Max noisily sucked up the last of his daiquiri. He propped his chin on top of the straw, and the straw crumpled. His face smacked the table. He started to giggle.
“Matthias?” I said. “Max?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brand swing to a stop and look toward us.
Max said, mock-serious, “Rune?”
I pulled his glass toward me and sniffed the dregs. “Max, have you taken anything?”
“You think I stole from you?” he demanded in outrage.
“No. Have you taken anything. Tonight. Are you bloody smashed?”
“No, I am not! I am perfectly sober. Don’t be such a . . . a . . . a salty cucumber.” He frowned. “I have no idea what that means.” He burst into laughter.
Brand came back to the table. He gave me an uncertain look and said, “I was dancing.”
“Ciaran mind-fucked you.”
Brand’s lips went straight, the corners pressed tight. Then he blinked and looked closer at me. “What’s wrong?”
I wasn’t ready to talk about the Grim Omen. And something was wrong with Max. “Look at him. Is he high?”
Brand stopped looking suspiciously at me long enough to look suspiciously at Max. “Oy! Matthias! Did you take anything?”
“Why am I suddenly a thief?” Max demanded.
Brand made a growling sound and grabbed the glass that I was holding. He sniffed it. He didn’t smell anything that flagged his interest either.
Then his face went blank, the way it did that when he was mentally rifling through everything he’d seen and heard in an attempt to imagine the worst possible scenario. I heard him say, “Ice cubes.”
“Ice cubes?”
“Oh fuck me. ‘Cubic Dreams.’ Clever—fucking clever.” He looked over his shoulder toward the bar and said, “I need to have a word with that bartender.”
Since he had his hands on his knives, I said, “Let’s all go.”
I gripped Max’s t-shirt in a fist and lifted him upright. He squawked in alarm when the chair fell out from under him. The three of us moved to the bar. I watched the bartender’s face as we approached, and looked for any sign of smugness or contempt.
“What did you give him?” I demanded.
“Give who? Cutie?” the bartender smiled nervously at Max, who grinned sloppily back. “Just the standard kick. He’ll be fine. I thought you knew. That’s what we do here.”
“Define standard kick,” I said.
“A little something-something. He’ll laugh a lot, see some pretty colors, stuff like that. That’s it. I promise.”
“I’m a cutie,” Matthias said.
The bartender smiled again, more confident. “Yes, you are. But. Um. I need to get back to work.”
“Okay,” Brand said. He reached out, slipped his fingers behind the bartender’s neck, and slammed his head to the marble countertop. There was a crack, and I don’t think it was cartilage. Blood from a split lip smeared an imperfect red circle as Brand put a hand on the back of the squirming man’s head and pressed down hard.
Brand said, “You’re lying.”
“I’m not!”
Brand bent low and whispered in the bartender’s ear for what felt like a very long time. The man’s face went gray. He said, “Just a hallucinogen, that’s it, I swear. I swear! He’s a fucking Lovers! Did you know that? Did you know that? You’re lucky I didn’t reach for the rat poison!” Bubbles of blood popped from his nostrils. “We’ve got cameras! If you try to hurt me in here, you’ll get into trouble!”
Now I bent low.
I made the young man strain to hear me over the music as I said, “Where the hell do you think you are? This is New Atlantis, and that boy is under my protection. Harm to him must go through me. Break that law, and you become my legitimate prey.”
“They’re uppers! I only gave him some uppers! He’ll just act goofy, that’s all—I was just trying to, I was only—”
Brand pressed down harder. “Maybe he’ll make a fool of himself. Maybe he’ll get in the wrong stranger’s car. Maybe he’ll get in his own car and try to drive. Maybe he’ll stumble across the path of someone who doesn’t like goofy. Maybe you’ll be waiting outside for him after closing.”
“But he’s one of them! Do you know what the Lovers did? Why they got their asses destroyed?” The bartender’s eyes rolled from Brand to me. “He was one of them! I saw him! I went to some of the Lovers’ parties.” The word was steeped in spittle. “I went to them with my boyfriend, when he was alive, before they took him. This boy you’re with—this thing you’re protecting—he was always with his uncle, wearing a stupid dog collar, sitting in the corner while his uncle did things to the humans. He’s one of them! Do you want to know what my boyfriend looked like by the time the Heart Throne was done? What they did to Joey’s face? To his health? I—”
“Let him go,” Max said softly. “This isn’t fun.”
He drifted away toward the door.
“Go with him,” Brand said to me.
I looked at Brand’s rigid arm and the bartender’s pinned head.
Brand said, “I won’t kill him. Go with Matthias, Rune.”
That’d have to be good enough. I hurried after Max. He was lingering by the front door, picking at a loose chip of paint that crusted a light switch.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I thought I saw a saber-toothed tiger. But it was just a mophead.”
“That’ll happen,” I said, gently.
“Maybe if we wait around long enough, it’ll turn back into a tiger. I would like to see that. We could make it a pet! Maybe we should . . .”
He continued to chatter, completely unaware of the tears streaming down his face.
“Oh, Max,” I said, “Come on. Let’s get you home.”