A singsongy bell chimed, and for a moment, Finn wasn’t quite sure where he was. He peeked from under incredibly cozy covers, unveiling his lavishly over-the-top surroundings. A hotel suite. New York City. The previous night’s events came rushing back to him in a barrage of booze-fueled images of violence and decadence. If for a brief moment, he was unsure of where he was or what had happened to him, all uncertainty was now gone. Garrett happened to him.
“Ah. Room service,” Garrett emerged from under a sea of blankets on a nearby couch and jogged to the door, wearing only a flimsy pair of boxer briefs.
Finn got up, grabbed a pillow, and flung it at him. “For Chrissake, man. Will you put some clothes on?”
Garrett deflected the pillow, ignoring Finn’s advice. “Last time I checked; briefs were considered articles of clothing. Therefore, I’m more dressed than I ought to be. I’m practically dapper.” He opened the door to a wide-eyed female server. “Come on in, love.” The lady pushed the service cart in, eyeing the half-naked pooka incredulously. It wasn’t uncommon for people to get overwhelmed by Garrett. He had the looks of a runway model and the confidence of a crown prince. It was often difficult not to get intimidated. He picked up his jeans off the floor and fished around in its pockets, taking out a hundred-dollar bill. “Thank you for your service,” he said with a grin.
The girl saw the bill and waved him off. “That’s way too much. The food isn’t even worth that.”
Garrett placed the bill on the girl’s palm and closed her fingers around it. “I insist,” he said with a wink.
The poor flabbergasted girl walked out ashen, muttering a silent thanks, looking like she wasn’t quite sure what just happened to her. Garrett happened to her.
Finn shook his head. “Was that absolutely necessary?”
Garrett chomped on a piece of crispy bacon from the tray. “What?”
“It’s called sexual harassment. Look it up.” Finn grabbed a breakfast-laden plate and brought it to the small dining table by the window. The previous night’s exertions had left him starving.
Garrett poured himself a cup of coffee and joined him. “Lighten up, leprechaun. I hardly think she’ll file a complaint,” he said with a wicked smile. “So,” Garrett continued, “who’s next on our hit list?”
A sound somewhere between a chortle and a cough escaped Finn’s lips as he nearly choked on his English muffin. “Christ, you really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“The carnage? Hell, yeah. Those morons had it coming. It was almost too easy; I didn’t even have to change.”
Finn couldn’t argue that. Last night’s opponents didn’t merit tapping into Garrett’s extraordinary abilities. When in the heat of battle, he usually chose to change into a leopard, but in the abandoned pub, he opted to fight in his true form, although the savagery wasn’t any less intense. Garrett, in any form, would always be just a little more primal than most.
Finn eyed his friend curiously. “Are you saying you want back in the army?”
“When did you hear me say that? All I want is to have a little fun. A taste for battle has got me longing for the good ole days, that’s all.” Garrett grabbed a piece of bacon off Finn’s plate. “To be clear, I do not want to rejoin the army, but I wouldn’t mind pinch-hitting for the queen’s team—a cameo, if you will, a special guest appearance. After heads have rolled and the battlefield is awash with the blood of our enemies, then I’ll go on my merry way. What do you say, old friend? It’ll be a blast.”
Finn nodded his head in agreement, remembering the days of fighting side by side with Garrett. It would certainly be an honor and a treat to battle alongside him again. “The elusive pooka returns to fight again,” he teased.
Garrett flashed him a menacing grin. “Hell, yeah, man.” He got up and put his jeans on, instantly raring to go. “Let’s round up the rest of the queen’s stragglers and get this battle going then.”
Finn remembered one more thing he needed to do in Manhattan. Before he and Clover quarreled, she had given him a letter, with a fervent request for its safe and speedy delivery. “Before we assemble the soldiers, I need to deliver a letter to Clover’s best friend.”
The slight detour seemed to buoy Garrett’s spirits even higher. “Two mysterious faeries, one dashingly handsome, one slightly bedraggled, show up at a lackey’s door with covert correspondence from the other realm. Will she invite them in? Or will absolute mayhem ensue? The suspense is killing me. What, pray tell, is the young lass’s name?”
“Andie. She lives in Chelsea.”
“She sounds delicious,” Garrett said, clearly trying to get a rise from Finn.
“If you can’t behave yourself, you can’t come,” Finn cautioned, dead serious.
Garrett held his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m teasing. Besides, I’ve already had breakfast.”
Extra fortifications were put in place, and yet Helena couldn’t find a calming breath as she paced anxiously in her rooms. Even as Scobert and Kean were by her side, and a dozen soldiers stood sentry outside her quarters, she felt exposed. For the Unseelies to snatch Liz right from under her nose was a brazen move, to say the least, and if she was being completely honest, a quite effective one. Helena was not only enraged but shaken—an unholy combination. In her current state, she was in no condition to make command decisions, and while her logical mind knew it, her anger prevailed. If it was an all-out war that Alistair wanted, then so be it.
As if responding to her very thoughts, Scobert placed a hand on her shoulder and whispered softy. “Helena, breathe. Let’s try to approach this calmly.”
As much as she resented Scobert for effortlessly reading her every emotion, she admittedly took comfort in his presence, an anchor keeping her afloat in the storm. She took a seat and attempted to slow her heartbeat. “This is impossible!” she proclaimed. “How am I to remain calm when Liz is held hostage and I’m beset with the knowledge that perhaps for the first time in millennia, the Seelie Queen’s home has been breached? The gods help me Scobert, I will wipe them out.”
“Alistair will not harm Liz. He’s merely trying to rattle you, and succeeding,” Scobert said.
Helena couldn’t stay seated; it was as if her body wouldn’t permit it. She got up and resumed pacing. “How were they able to get in here?” she almost screamed at Scobert and Kean, searching their faces for an answer. “We have multiple layers of security in place, and even if they were able to get through the most obvious ones—the gnomes, there still remains enchantments, censors, not to mention the fact that the entire Seelie Court is littered with soldiers.”
Scobert shook his head, looking as perplexed as they all were. “Kean was the last to see Liz last night. I honestly don’t see how somebody could have penetrated our defenses without sounding alarms. Even if Iekika abducted her and black magic was employed, we still would have known that magic was used. I hate to say it, but could we possibly be looking at an inside job?”
“Unlikely,” Kean surmised, “because even if it were, the only way in and out of here is through the gnomes, which means if it were an inside job, they would have to have been in on it. That’s simply not possible. Archie and Alfred are incorruptible, so are the other gnomes.”
Helena nodded, resolute in her trust and confidence in the gnomes. “What time did you see Liz last night?”
“It was after I’d delivered my evening report to you—at about the twenty-second hour, maybe twenty-second and a quarter? She was tending to her flowers. I guess she was just waiting for me to leave before calling it a night herself. She seemed perfectly fine.”
“And the gnomes attest that nobody else entered or left after you, not until the next morning when Anna called and discovered the note,” Helena said to no one in particular.
A silence descended as Scobert and Kean awaited Helena’s instructions.
“Finn should be back in about two days, correct?” Helena asked.
Scobert and Kean exchanged glances and nodded.
“The three of you will rescue her. You will go into their territories, breach their defenses the same way they did mine, and like a thief in the night, you will get Liz back. Do you understand me?”
“Understood,” Scobert said.
“You will slay whoever stands in your way. And when Liz is safely returned, my army will mount an attack on the Unseelie Court,” Helena ordered with resolve.
Again, and again, the Unseelies had brought destruction to her court. Now she was inclined to unload her fury at their doorstep.
Garrett leaned against the wall, arms crossed with a roguish grin on his face, as Finn rang the buzzer to Andie’s apartment. Even though he’d already checked countless times, Finn reached into his pocket to check for the letter. Folded up and creased beyond belief, Clover’s note to her best friend had survived a trip around the world, a deadly bar brawl, and a night of heavy drinking in New York City. He’d be damned if it wasn’t getting delivered to its rightful recipient. As he waited for Andie to get the door, he felt a nervousness settle at the pit of his stomach.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Before Finn could swat Garrett’s finger away, it had already inundated the doorbell with pesky insistence.
“Jaysus, Garrett. You’ll wake the dead,” Finn scolded. “I should have left you at the hotel.”
“Oh, relax, will you? When did you become a freakin’ schoolmarm?”
Finn heard the deadbolt unlock and in the next moment, Andie peeked out from a small opening; the door chain still fastened. “Yes?” she said, her voice groggy from sleep and her dark hair a tangled mess. She rubbed her eyes and looked expectantly at Finn for an answer. Then suddenly, as if realization and wakefulness dawned at the exact same second, her eyes widened and she jerked forward, her face filling the gap in the door. “You,” she said accusingly. “I know you.” She opened the door wide and stood there in her pajamas with her hands at her waist and a murderous look on her face. “Where is she? What have you done to her?”
“You know me,” Finn said, both a query and a statement.
“Duh. I saw you that day at the park and I know that there’s something going on between the two of you. And by the way, I never believed for one second that she just jetted away on holiday without telling me in person. She left me a stupid letter—which I’ve shown numerous times to the police, I’ll have you know. And now you show up at my door, looking all guilty.” She noticed Garrett standing by the side of the door and turned her nose up at him. “You better start talking or else I’m calling the cops,” she said haughtily.
Finn pulled the letter out and waved it in the air like a white flag. “This will explain everything.”
“Another letter? Are you kidding me?”
“With the truth this time, I promise,” Finn said, placating. “Just read it.”
Andie snatched the letter from Finn. “I hope you’re aware that I know her handwriting well. If this is a forgery—”
Garrett interrupted. “A forensic examiner. How charming.”
“Nobody was talking to you, pretty boy,” Andie spat back. “I’m going to read this. You two can wait out here.”
As the door slammed on their faces, Finn laughed inwardly at the assaulted expression on Garrett’s face.
“What the hell?” Garrett said incredulously. “That girl has some personality on her.”
“Get over yourself, pretty boy,” Finn teased. “You’re so used to women fawning over you that when someone doesn’t fall over themselves admiring you, you assume they’ve got some kind of personality disorder.”
“We’re trapped in the dingy hallway of a fifth-floor walk-up in the sketchy outskirts of Chelsea. This is not an ego thing; It’s a human dignity thing.”
“Stop being so dramatic.”
Garrett let out an exaggerated sigh. “The lengths I go to.”
Finn did his best to ignore his theatrics. A few short minutes later, the door inched open. Andie looked like she’d run a comb through her hair; her eyes were brighter and her expression keen.
“You read it?” Finn asked.
Andie nodded as her gaze shifted from Finn to Garrett, then back to Finn. “Clover trusts you, so I’m going to trust you. Are you—I can’t believe these words are about to come out of my mouth−are you both leprechauns?”
“Hell, no,” Garrett answered with disdain. “I’m much cooler than Finn will ever hope to be.”
Finn continued to ignore Garrett. “I’m a leprechaun. Garrett is a good friend of mine. He’s a pooka—a shapeshifter.”
“Like a werewolf?” Andie asked, her eyes wide.
“No,” snapped Garrett. “Not like a werewolf at all. Have we not been speaking English this whole time? Jaysus.”
“Garrett, please,” begged Finn. Then, he turned to Andie. “If you’ll let us in, we’ll explain everything. I’ll answer any of your questions.”
Andie seemed to consider the demerits of inviting two mythical creatures into her home, but her curiosity clearly got the better of her. She threw the door wide open. “Come in.”
After two pots of coffee and the proffered remnants of day-old pizza, which they both politely declined but Andie devoured, Finn and Garrett found themselves at the tail end of what can only be described as The Andie Inquisition. The minutes had dragged on as Clover’s best friend peppered them with endless questions—each one designed to catch them in a lie. When finally she seemed satisfied enough with their answers, she asked the same recurring question, “How come I can’t go to Faerie-land to see her?”
Finn took in a breath to respond, but Garrett saved him the trouble.
“Doll-face, haven’t we been through this already?” Garrett said, his voice tight with frustration. “It’s not safe. Faerie is not like Disneyland, where every lackey so inclined can visit on a whim. Do you understand?” He asked, brimming with exasperation. “And it’s not Faerie land—It’s just Faerie.”
Andie lifted her chin. “Yeah? How come Momma Ruth and Nick got a free pass?”
Garrett threw his arms up and paced the room, giving Finn a deadly look that clearly said, you owe me one.
Finn placed his coffee cup on the table and leaned toward Andie slowly, as if sudden movements might provoke another round of cross-examination. “Please believe me when I tell you that I won’t let any harm come to Clover or her family. When all this is over and the danger has been taken care of, I promise you she’ll come back to you safe.” Finn decided to lay all his cards on the table. “I care about her. I’m going to make sure she’s okay.”
Andie glared at him. “Says the leprechaun who’s out gallivanting in New York City with his pet pooka while his girlfriend is basically trapped in another dimension. Some Prince Charming you are.”
Garrett looked ripe to strangle the poor girl. “You did not just refer to me as a pet. I vow to the Gods, woman—”
Before Garrett could complete his ominous oath, the doorbell rang, and the room went silent.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Finn whispered.
Andie got up to get the door. “Chill out. We lackeys do this thing called online shopping. It’s a real wonder of the modern world.”
Finn and Garrett situated themselves into Andie’s small kitchen, hidden from sight, but ready in case of trouble. Andie rolled her eyes at them as she opened the door. Finn watched as she unlocked the deadbolt.
“Yes?” Andie kept the door chain fastened while her left hand grasped the doorknob. Then her finger slowly made its way to the side of the door and started tapping soundlessly−in quick succession to begin, then slower and more deliberate, then quickly again.
The voice from the hallway answered jovially. “I have a package for Noelle Estrada.”
“She’s in the apartment two doors down,” Andie replied, her tone flat.
“Oh, pardon me. I must have gotten my numbers mixed up,” the voice responded in the same cheery tone.
“Don’t worry about it. Can I help you with anything else?”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind,” the voice said sheepishly, “I’ve been driving since dawn, I could use a proper toilet.”
Garrett nudged Finn and whispered, “What the hell?” but Finn’s attention was still focused on Andie’s twitchy finger.
“Sure,” Andie said, her voice robotic while her finger continued to tap on the door.
Finn turned to Garrett, finally understanding. “SOS. When that door opens, get ready to attack.”
“Abso-freakin-lutely” Garrett said as he shimmered, ready to change at a moment’s notice.
Andie had never seen a gun in real life, but when she opened the door to the bogus delivery guy, she had known right away she was in big trouble. With a finger to his lips and a gun pointed directly at her, the man at the door mouthed the words be quiet. Andie had nodded imperceptibly at the same moment her finger found the door. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. While she played the totally unrealistic part of the clueless New York City girl who’d let a complete stranger use her bathroom, all she could really concentrate on were the little taps she made on her door and the all-consuming wish that faeries knew Morse code.
As she prepared to let the armed man into her house, three more emerged behind him, all of them looking like grunge delinquents out trick-or-treating. She’d wondered what they’d discover when they walked through her door. With her luck, probably two insanely handsome faeries eating cold pizza. Her heart hammered in her chest as her fingers fumbled at the door chain. As she invited danger in, she hoped against hope that her two guests were armed and prayed to any god who would listen to spare her life.
She opened the door and dropped to the floor. “Help!” she finally screamed as she covered her head with her hands, in total cowering-in-a-foxhole mode. What happened next was hard to determine with her face pressed against the parquet and her eyes barely open, but it sure sounded like the faeries had been ready, she thought triumphantly. Someone had dragged the trespassers in and somehow launched them like sacks of flour into her living room. Thud, thud, thud, thud. She dared a peek and witnessed absolute mayhem unfolding; her bargain furniture taking the brunt of the commotion. Two apiece, Finn and Garrett battled the now disarmed punk posse with awe-inspiring grace and skill. Crouched on the ground as she was, she couldn’t help but watch and marvel. It was like watching those old Kung-Fu movies, but way cooler. Despite the danger she was in, an errant thought zipped through her traumatized brain—No wonder Clover fell for Finn. Hot and deadly.
The punk posse, though not as quick as Finn and Garrett, were holding their own. They seemed intent on getting at Finn and seemed willing to take however many punches to succeed. In the heat of the melee, it was hard to tell whose fist was obliterating whose nose or which guy had a shoe up whose mouth. Suddenly a gun fired, loud and all-encompassing; Andie felt like her heart had exploded in her chest.
The fighting stopped, a chaotic freeze-frame of sorts. The one thing that caught Andie’s eye was the patch of blood blossoming in Garrett’s pristine white shirt and the look of pure and utter rage on his handsome face. Then the impossible happened. A leopard, huge and menacing, appeared in the middle of her studio apartment in the spot where Garrett had stood only a few moments ago.
It paced amidst the broken furniture scattered all over her faux Persian rug and gave out a deafening roar. As if her body had a mind of its own, Andie crawled into the kitchen, squished herself under the kitchen sink, and listened in horror as all hell broke loose.
Anna replaced the sheets in Clover’s bedroom and caught herself marveling at how quickly she’d started to call her guest bedroom Clover’s room. She’d only had her stay for a short while, before she was forced to spend most of her time in the Otherworld, and yet she could honestly say she missed having the girl around. With Ruth and Nick staying at her home, too, it seemed the group was not complete without her. As she puttered around the bedroom, she reflected on the complicated relationship brewing between Finn and Clover. The day would come when the girl would need to go back to Earth; she wondered whether her son loved her enough to call her home his. She hated the idea of losing Finn again, of having him live so far away. She secretly hoped Clover might decide to stay permanently in Faerie after the whole Alistair mess was all sorted out. Then she quickly decided it was none of her business and that she shouldn’t be sticking her nose in other people’s business.
Anna opened the armoire and gasped. Embarrassed at its untidy state, she started emptying its contents to make more space for Clover’s belongings. Dresses, parasols, and slippers that hadn’t been worn in perhaps a century were stacked upon old dusty boxes and long forgotten knick-knacks. She smiled when she spied a wooden makeshift sword that Scobert had carved long ago for a young Finn. As her son’s very first sparring partner, she recalled with fondness how, even at a very young age, Finn had displayed such a natural talent for the warrior arts.
She blew at the dust that coated the items at the bottom of the wardrobe. Tin sewing kits, all rusted from disuse, piled haphazardly atop old scarves and sweaters. As her tidying progressed into a full-blown project, Anna plopped down on the floor, now sorting through the junk in earnest. Rummaging through long discarded possessions and tchotchkes, Anna silently scolded herself for being such a packrat. She sorted the items into two piles: keep and toss. Finn’s old play sword unerringly found its way to the keep pile. Underneath an old, tarnished jewelry box that was headed for the toss pile, Anna saw something that caught her eye—a red leather satchel, hardened and brittle from countless years of neglect.
A lump caught in her throat as she realized it had belonged to a good friend, an old friend. She’d almost forgotten she had it. When Finn’s real mother died, Anna had put away all her belongings, the sight of them causing too much pain. She gingerly picked it up, turned the bronze clasp that served as its lock, and looked inside. A length of cloth so old and moth-ridden fell apart in her hand as she reached for it. Tears fell silently down her cheek as she realized what it was. It was the baby smock that Brielle had sewn for her son; he was to wear it to his very first Midsummer’s Eve celebration, which never came to pass. The Queen’s Army had gone to war and Brielle with it. She never came back, dying in battle in defense of her queen. So revolted was the queen of the notion of a new mother dying in battle, she had thenceforth banned women from joining the army. Anna had lost her best friend that day, but she had also gained a son.
Seeing and touching her friend’s timeworn belongings tore old wounds wide open. While raising Finn had been the greatest joy of her life, losing Brielle had been its most significant loss. They had trained for the army together, she a year older than Anna and more experienced. Anna would have joined the army the following year, but fate had other plans.
Remembering the fiercest and most honorable woman she had ever known; it became no surprise that Finn was who he was. Born of such mighty stock, the boy was bound for greatness from the beginning. His father had been a soldier, too—a nameless liaison Brielle was happy to have nothing further to do with. She had planned from the start to raise the child by herself. When Brielle passed, Anna vowed to do right by her and raise Finn the way she imagined Brielle would have. She could only hope she’d done nearly as good a job.
A small notebook lay at the bottom of the satchel, the parchment so frayed and fragile that Anna was afraid it might disintegrate in her hands. Having never seen it before, she picked it up and slowly leafed through its pages, deciphering the small scrawl within, smiling to herself. Brielle’s journal was like a little manual to the warrior arts, filled with her own drawings and step-by-step instructions. Most effective disarming techniques. The virtues of a battle-axe vs. a longsword. She chuckled when she turned a page and found recipes for curiously strong mead and not so special barley bread.
Suddenly, she missed her friend with a longing so intense it nearly broke her heart. She continued flipping through the book’s pages, savoring all the little bits within, feeling as close as she’d ever been to her friend in years. Toward the end, Brielle had jotted less about fighting techniques and recipes, and more about her own life.
She wrote about the baby that kicked ferociously inside her and how she’d known right away he would one day grow up to be a great warrior. Anna touched that page fondly, imagining where Brielle might have been when she wrote that. Had she started sewing Finn’s smock by then?
Anna wiped another tear from her eye as she flipped through the journal’s pages. She settled on one particularly long entry, simply titled, My reasons. As she began to read her friend’s words, her heart fluttered in her chest and a cold sense of foreboding settled at the pit of her stomach. Her eyes quickly scanned through Brielle’s musings and when she finished, she went back and reread every word. Anna dropped the journal as she put a hand to her mouth, feeling like her very life was being sucked out of her. In an old, crumbling journal beneath moth-ridden piles of rubbish, Anna had uncovered the truth about Finn’s lineage. Without further hesitation, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the magical compass.