Chapter 5
The eyes. That had to be it, why he
seemed so familiar, why she couldn’t shake the sense that she’d
been here before. Those slightly tilted eyes were the same as Talia
Thorne’s. “You’re Talia’s father?”
Khan took a seat in one of his big
chairs, leaned back, arms wide on the rests, and crossed his legs
with an ankle to the other knee. Big chair, but he managed to
dominate it as a king does a throne. Arrogant. “I am.”
Layla kept the skepticism from her
face. Father would put him in middle age,
and he sure didn’t look it. Either he kept himself very well, or he
was lying. Nevertheless, her informant, Zoe, had been right: there
was something to be learned about the wraiths in this dockside
warehouse. That Khan knew to drop Talia’s name was proof. She
played along. “Do you know who started the wraith
war?”
His expression darkened. “Yes. I am
responsible. I and I alone.”
Disbelief mellowed the pop of shock
that hit Layla. Zoe had said she’d find the source here, too, but .
. . this guy? Really? “How?”
He sighed. “You would not
understand.”
“Try me.” Layla
felt his gaze on her, searching, debating. She wanted to press but
let the silence work for her instead.
“No,” he finally answered, and she
swore inwardly. “Explanations will not work. Not with my family,
not with the wraiths. You would have to stay with me and experience
it for yourself.”
Stay with him? “But why? You know I’d
have to expose what you’ve done.” What you
claim you’ve done.
He smiled, a slow pull of his sensuous
mouth, heavy with meaning. “I doubt very much you’ll do
that.”
Oh, please. Yes, she could admit that
on some level she was attracted to him. Fine. But nothing was going
to happen.
“I’m sorry. I have to write my story in
good faith, as the facts present themselves.” There was too much
shoddy reporting going on about wraiths already, some of it
resorting to paranormal explanations, which simply didn’t cut it.
Wraiths were the product of a disease, not a supernatural event.
Period.
His face grew serious. “Do not
misunderstand me. You can reveal whatever you like. I believe,
however, that you will choose to refrain. Sometimes a little
deception is called for.”
“You still haven’t answered my
question. Why would you want to do this?”
He leaned forward, braced his elbows on
his knees, gaze sharpening on hers. “That’s one of the things
you’ll have to find out. The most important of all.”
Layla stepped back, considering. She
didn’t trust him, or his offer. And especially his motives. But she
didn’t have anything left to lose and no reason to go home. “So you
want me to stay with you . . .”
“. . . and I want you to promise that
you will see your story through to the end. That you won’t run from
what is revealed until you have all your answers.”
“Will I meet Talia
Thorne?”
“It stands to reason; we’ll be staying
at Segue.”
Now he was talking. If he wanted to
seduce her, he should have led with Segue. Talia was the ungettable
get. For her, Layla would agree to almost anything.
“When?”
“Now.” He stood and approached. “But I
want your promise that you will see this through. You will discover
things . . . uncomfortable to your sensibilities. It will change
you.”
Layla had to tilt her head to look up
at him. Meet Talia today. Yes. Okay. And if he didn’t produce,
she’d have reason to back out. And all she’d have to do was endure
his melodrama.
“I agree.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear I’ll stick with you until I
learn the truth about the wraiths, provided that I meet Talia
Thorne today.” How he was going to pull that one off, she had no
idea. Talia Thorne was in West Virginia and they were in New
Jersey.
That familiar smile tweaked his lips
again. “Done.”
A moment hung in the air between them.
Layla didn’t have a good feeling about this. Not at all. Her palms
still smarted from her skidding fall during the attack. Her sweater
was dirty, the neckline pulled out of shape. And without her phone
and gun, she was unarmed. At least at Segue, she’d be a lot closer
to her Glock, though she didn’t think they’d let her out to fetch
it.
They’d need to get to the airport soon.
The police report would have to wait. Tomorrow morning, for sure.
Her attackers could not be left to prey on other
women.
Khan made no motion to get his own car
keys. Layla prompted him with a drawn out, “So . . .
?”
“Yes. So.” He inhaled a slow breath,
then asked with an air of great deliberation, “Do you believe in
magic?”
Layla never answered questions like
that.
“Of course you do,” he answered for
her. “Or will, shortly.”
Something flickered at the edge of
Layla’s vision. A free-standing mirror, gilt framed. She hadn’t
noticed it before. Weird.
“I imagine you need your
things?”
Layla shrugged. Would be
nice.
“Where do you live?”
As a rule she didn’t tell sources or
strange men where she lived. She answered vaguely. “New York
City.”
Khan gestured to the mirror. “Well, let
us go and get them.”
Layla stood in place. Yeah, she wanted
to go, but it seemed like he wanted her to look in the mirror
first. When still he hesitated, she ducked her head for a quick,
obligatory peek. As she pulled back, what she’d seen
registered.
Not a silvery, reflective surface. The
mirror was full of dark trees. Familiar trees. She knew those
trees.
Layla stepped directly in front of the
glass to get the full effect. The trees had realistic depth, though
the coloring was fanciful, as if deep jewel-toned light emanated
from within them. Actually, the setting reminded her of her silly
princess dream. Hadn’t Khan been there, too? Weird. The mirror had to be some sort of plasma screen.
A moving window. She could get her computer monitor to look like a
fish aquarium, and she’d seen similar things in futuristic sci-fi
movies.
“Is this your art?” He must have found
a wooded area with more than a touch of mystery, lit it just right,
then filmed the trees for an extended period of time. Created the
interface. “Does it show other places, too?”
“Come,” he said. His hand dipped
through the surface.
That she hadn’t
seen. Made her heart clutch, anxiety roll over her. She gritted her
teeth against it but felt the first prickle of sweat
anyway.
Not again.
She’d seen a lot of uncomfortable stuff
that went away with a hard blink and firm shake of her head, so . .
. there had to be a reasonable explanation
for this. It was a wicked technological effect, that’s all. She’d
be fine when she figured out how he did it.
She stepped closer herself, fingers
ready to touch. She held up her hand against the screen, reached.
Her hand—oh no—tingled and joined his on the
other side. She felt him move closer, his hard chest at her
shoulder as his free arm circled her waist. They were almost
dancing, and she fit against him perfectly. Her skin tingled at his
nearness, her blood warmed. This was starting to be a
problem.
“Don’t pull away,” he said, then
stepped them both through the surface.
The trees seemed real, but she only had
a passing impression of them. A deep, layered scent, heady. A
hurtful longing ripped at her heart. Whispering voices filled her
head: Remember!
But the single step carried them into
the middle of a city. New York. Across the street from Central
Park.
They’d been in one place . . . and were
now in another. Impossible.
Her knees gave, but Khan held her up
and pulled her into a close embrace. This couldn’t be real,
couldn’t be happening. This went beyond occasional hallucinations,
maybe to a complete psychotic break.
She dropped her head on his chest to
blank out the city street. He smelled good—dark and woodsy like
those trees, and masculine, with something sharp and exotic
besides. She smothered the impulse to put her arms around his neck
and hold on tight. Wait, she was holding on
to him tight. Maybe a little bit longer . . .
If she could just take a deep breath,
everything would be okay.
“Magic,” he said into her
ear.
Layla shook her head in denial.
Couldn’t be.
“It is,” he said with that honey-dark
voice. “I would have taken you directly to your residence, but I do
not know where you live.”
She choked on a sarcastic laugh. “You
can’t use magic to find out?”
“Would that it worked that way. I’d
have found you sooner.”
Layla noticed the amused glance of a
middle-aged man walking briskly with a paper under his arm, as if
she and Khan were canoodling in public. She pulled away,
straightening her clothes. Without his arms, she needed a coat. The
city was freezing.
“So we teleported?” Maybe he had some
superadvanced technology, like from an alien civilization. Maybe
that was it.
“I would say we passed.” He held out a hand to invite her back to him.
“Is it so hard to believe in magic?”
Kinda, yeah. Magic belonged to fairy
tales. Life was based in reality. Growing up as a foster kid, she’d
learned that the hard way. Shunted from home to facility, she’d
been forced to abandon any and all daydreams, all hope for a bit of
magic. It was too painful when those hopes were dashed over and
over again. Things were what they were, and nothing more. Even her
hallucinations were just a chemical imbalance, a defect probably
caused by her addict mother during pregnancy. Reality was cruel,
but she could trust it. How could she possibly believe in
magic?
“Then you’re like, what—a wizard?” She
took a step back. The space between them chilled her more than the
winter weather. That she was already halfway home, in semifamiliar
surroundings, helped her keep her composure.
“I warned you that your perceptions
would be challenged.” He reached a little farther toward her. “This
is just the beginning.”
Layla didn’t budge. Perceptions
challenged?
No, no. It was way worse. More like . .
. perceptions confirmed. Because if this guy had a magic mirror,
then maybe all the weird shit she’d seen throughout her life was
real, too.
Oh, God, she was going to be sick. She
couldn’t think about that possibility.
“The wraiths—are they infected with a
disease or . . . or . . . are they magic?”
“Magic.”
“And Talia Thorne?”
“Magic.”
Legs suddenly weak, Layla ignored his
hand entirely and lowered herself slowly to the sidewalk. She
wrapped her arms over her breasts to keep warm. This changed
everything.
A young woman walking by gave her a
wide berth, but her sweatered Shih Tzu yipped briefly before being
yanked on its way.
“What about Adam Thorne?”
Khan towered over her, tall and dark
and now very dangerous. “Not magic.”
Figured.
She focused across the street into the
park, gazing at the break in the low stone wall where the sidewalk
led into patchy November-stricken grass. Some guy stood at the
edge, staring at Khan. Beautiful, dark haired, model perfect, the
guy was positively glowering with his icepale eyes. He must have
seen them come out of “magic” nowhere.
She had the urge to ask the stranger if
what had happened was real. What it looked like from his
perspective.
But Layla felt Khan’s hand under her
arm and she followed his upward pull. He was returning the other
man’s glare. “We go.”
“What?” Layla tripped into a walk,
dragged along. “Is he magic, too?”
“Not exactly.”
Layla had to double her stride to keep
up. “Wraith?”
“No,” Khan ground out. “Something else.
Where do you live?”
Ahead, an outrageously beautiful woman,
blond and glossy, turned in a doorway and stared as they
approached. Her intensity burned. Khan pulled Layla into traffic to
cross the street before they got too close.
“And her?” Layla was getting scared.
Magic everywhere. A taxi horn blared at them.
Khan didn’t answer. He halted midway
across the street as a lovely child with huge expressive eyes
emerged from the throng on the other side. The maturity in his
perfect, guileless gaze was piercing and unnatural. Layla looked up
the street to find perfect person after perfect person emerging
from the stream of otherwise bland and ignorant pedestrians. A car
jerked and made a new lane to get by Khan and her.
“Khan?” Layla flipped her gaze to the
other side of the street. A watcher here, another there. Oh, God,
she was going to lose it.
“You have nothing to fear,” he
said.
Yeah, right. The whole world had just
turned upside down.
A screech sounded behind her, and she
turned as a car jockeyed to get ahead of a bus. Bumpers touched,
scraped, crumpled while a wave of traffic poured through the
intersection, a light turning green. Cars collided with
earsplitting force, and a Chevy suddenly fishtailed, its hulk
careening toward her position.
“Kathleen!”
Layla’s senses foundered as darkness
broke into the world around her. Faraway screams of alarm warped in
the air, and she had a sickening sense of displacement. Attachment
to her body seemed suddenly tenuous, the exotic, woodsy scent again
filling her head. She was drifting, separate, her tether to the
world loosened.
And then she was standing on the
sidewalk beyond the accident, Khan’s arms around her. It felt so
good, so right, against him, as if some part of her could finally
rest, while her nerves vibrated with excitement. A new sense of
street orientation was slow in coming, so she clutched at his arm
and managed a breathless question. “Magic?”
His answer was an affirmative low
growl. The tightness of his returned embrace told her that he was
deeply disturbed by the sudden danger as well.
“I thought you needed a magic mirror to
get from one place to another.”
“No,” he answered. “I didn’t want to
scare you the first time you touched Shadow.”
“Still scared, though.” She panted with
shock, trying to recover her equilibrium. The accident involved no
less than five cars, but the speeds hadn’t been great, so the only
lives at risk had been those of the bystanders, most particularly
her. Close call. If not for Khan, she could have been seriously
hurt.
The strangely perfect people who’d been
watching them had disappeared, though the sidewalks weren’t so busy
that they could melt into the crowd. It was as if they were never
there. She’d have dismissed them from her mind entirely, and even
had a niggling inclination to do just that, if not for Khan holding
her tightly, proof that magic was all around her. That was twice
she’d been transported now, and she didn’t feel
drugged.
Layla swallowed hard as she watched
people emerge from their cars to check the damage and yell at each
other with wild gestures. “So this magic thing?”
“Yes?”
“It’s everywhere in the
world?”
“More so than ever.”
“And everybody just goes around
oblivious?” Except, maybe, me?
“Most are aware on some level.” She
felt him lower his head to her shoulder. “Each must experience it
for himself or herself sooner or later.”
“I want to know everything. I mean
everything.” The blood now pumping through
her veins had way more to do with this incredible revelation than
with her near miss. This was huge. Way bigger than the wraiths.
This was her life.
“You will learn if you stay with
me.”
“Right now.”
He chuckled softly against her, the
movement teasing her wayward senses.
She didn’t see what was so funny. This
knowledge was momentous. She could not conceive of going through
another day without a full understanding of this unbelievable power
and its influence on the world. On her.
She gripped the arm he’d circled around
her waist and glanced over her shoulder. “Do it
again.”
Khan got them as far as her
neighborhood, and then they walked the “little ways down here” to
her home while he responded to her rapid-fire
questions.
How did you learn to use your power?
Came naturally. Do you cast spells?
No. Can you do anything else? Like what, for example? Kill a person? Yes. Kill a wraith? Certainly.
Guess lotto numbers? What are
those?
He didn’t elaborate on the nature of
Shadow; she’d see it soon enough for herself and he didn’t want her
to fear him. Her continued regard was already wearing away his
power, and he had been weakened to begin with. If he wasn’t very
careful, very controlled with his appearance, she would know
Death.
She spoke her thoughts with her
questions. “. . . I get the secrecy thing—I mean your kind has been
burned at the stake and drowned and who knows what other horrible
deaths—but do you blame us? Well, I guess you do, but still . .
.”
Khan didn’t correct her mistaken
assumptions. No fae had ever been killed by fire or water; those
were mortal deaths. The fae existed out of time and place and could
not do anything as transformative as die.
Her street was lined with buildings of
ugly gray or red brick. Attached were metal landings ascending the
exteriors, each connected by deathly narrow stairs. The area lacked
soul, the spark of creativity, but at least it seemed clean. It
smelled better than many a human road he’d traveled in his
time.
A small scrap of a park opened up
across the street. A group of little girls in heavy coats sat in a
circle around a blindfolded child who waved her arms to locate one
of her playmates. The children forming the circle
chanted:
Dead man, dead
man, come alive
Come alive by the number five
One, two, three-four-five
Dead man, come alive!
Come alive by the number five
One, two, three-four-five
Dead man, come alive!
Again, the human preoccupation with
immortality. Did it start so young?
Layla heard it, too. “Can you bring
someone back from the dead?”
Khan withheld a bitter laugh at the
irony of the question. Kathleen had come back from death, hadn’t
she? Her soul burned bright right beside him. And then there was
the devil, escaped from Hell, now at large. “It is possible to
return into mortality, but none are the same as they were upon
their passing. Death is change.”
A yellow vehicle, garish for the gray
day, waited in front of the next building, its back lights an
impatient, glaring red. Toward this building, Layla turned, saying,
“This is me.”
She stopped at the door, mumbling,
“Crap. My keys.”
No doorway had ever blocked Khan from
his quarry. A twitch and push of Shadow and the door swung
open.
“Damn handy,” Layla said, her wonder
mixing with her unease. Already she was growing accustomed to the
idea of magic. The human adaptive capacity was staggering. The
rapid pulse of change would shred many a lesser fae. No wonder few
could hold on to the form of a body long in mortality.
Layla marched up the stairs before him,
took the short hallway on the second floor to a door that already
stood open. She rushed inside. “Ty?”
Two mortal heartbeats accelerated
within the apartment. A myriad of emotions flooded the air, most of
which Khan didn’t like. One in particular he found he hated, which
was a revelation.
“I was hoping I’d catch you,” a strong,
male voice said. “If we could just . . .”
Both Layla and “Ty” looked over at Khan
when he entered.
Ty was in the full power of youth and
physical maturity. Eyes clear, blood thick, the light of his soul
shone with purpose and self-assurance. He took a step back from
Layla, which proved he was intelligent, too. “Sorry. I didn’t know
you had company.” Ty’s tone suggested extreme irritation, but the
emotion coming out of him was now distinctly one of
hurt.
Too bad. “If you could just
what with Layla?”
A dark, near-violent sensation hummed
beneath Khan’s skin, but he could not name it. It quickened his
Shadow heart, though.
“Speak with her,” Ty answered. His
shoulders went back as he drew himself up.
“Khan,” Layla said with a note of
warning. “This is my friend.”
Ty glanced back to Layla. “Friend?
Three years and that’s what I am to you?”
She shook her head in frustration. “I
want to talk, Ty, really I do, because there are things to say. But
I can’t right now. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
A muscle in the boy’s jaw twitched. He
jerked his head in Khan’s direction. “Are you with
him?”
Khan smiled his
answer.
Layla scowled. “Not like that. He’s
just an informant for my story.”
“Your story. So you’re still out there
trying to get yourself killed? Fine.” Ty heaved a sigh, but anguish
still poured out of him. “Don’t bother calling me until this is
over. Then maybe we’ll have something to talk about.”
Ty stepped toward the door, and Khan
allowed him to pass, his estimation of the mortal now at dust.
Layla said nothing but watched while Ty turned the corner out of
the apartment. Her silence followed the tread of his feet down the
stairs and only broke when the downstairs door slammed
shut.
“You didn’t have to be a jackass,” she
said.
“Get your things.”
But her chin dimpled with fury. “The
last thing I want to do is hurt him any more. So
thanks.”
Her reasoning was insane. “You seek out
wraiths, and he leaves you to do the work alone? If he cared, he’d
be by your side to see that you do not get attacked on the street,
dragged into an alley, almost raped, almost killed. And you don’t
want him to get hurt?”
Layla’s mouth compressed with
obstinacy. “He didn’t know where I was, or what I was
doing.”
“By his own admission, he had an idea.
And he left you to it.”
“It’s not his job to shadow my every
step.”
That’s right. It’s
mine.
She swiped a hand across her eyes. “And
I’m my own person. He’s tried to stop me, but I felt that the story
needed to be told. I can’t seem to let it go. Leaving was his way
of taking a stand, of showing me how much he loves—”
“Don’t.” Khan couldn’t bear for her to
finish the sentence. There was no defense for such inaction. How
long had she braved the deathless ones alone? She’d have been dead
and “Ty” would have preserved himself. “Get your things. We
go.”
“Fine,” Layla bit out, leaving the
room. Khan stood fast against the gale of anger behind that short
word and almost lost cohesion as he battled for control. He’d been
weakened by the gate already, and by Layla even more
so.
An enlarged but blurred image of Talia
was pinned to Layla’s wall, and its presence steadied him. Amid the
clutter of her life, the urgency of her story about the wraiths,
Talia was at its center. Talia, her daughter. Talia, their daughter. The thought cooled Khan and allowed him
to shift his gaze from the picture on the wall to take in the rest
of her home.
Papers and books littered every
surface—table, couch, counter, floor—with an odd empty pocket here
or there, the places for her body as she worked. There were few
personal touches. A framed photograph caught his eye. The image
revealed the break of dawn reflected on a worn, urban doorway, the
citrine colors of morning simmering on its surface, making new what
was old, regardless of the peeling blue paint. An artist had to
have snapped this shot, one with the vision to thumb her nose at
Time as she captured a moment of magic. It was signed Layla
Mathews, but it bore the stamp of Kathleen’s soul.
What was she doing following wraiths
when she should be at her art?
A sudden cry brought him swiftly into
the room. A large bag, spilling with possessions, sat on a messy
bed. Layla was on her knees on the floor, her head in her hands,
breath hitching, broken. She screamed again as a loud, metallic
clang sounded. The molecules of the room
shuddered outward from a point of impact: her.
What was—?
No!
Her scream devolved into a low moan as
Khan gathered her into his arms and threw his head back to curse
Heaven. The angels had no idea what they were doing. They rarely
did. And the bitter irony was, Khan himself had given them the
means to Layla’s destruction.
What Rose needed was a good deed. A big
one. Something to prove, should she be caught, that she didn’t
belong there. Because she didn’t. She’d been
forced to take care of some rather ugly business from time to time,
but that wasn’t her fault. She had a right to defend herself,
didn’t she? A good deed would prove once and for all that she was
good, because that’s what she was—good.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
First thing, though, she had to wash
the blood off her hands—those women at the Walmart were just
rude—and then find Mickey. According to the
newspapers, twelve years had passed, but she was sure he’d been
faithful. Would probably be at home in Macon, missing her. Mourning
her. On the drive down, she’d make a plan for a good deed on a far
larger scale than what had transpired at Walmart. And how selfless
of her, too, because others might not understand what had just
happened and blame her instead. Selfless,
that’s what she was, especially since she was so plagued by the
rattle in her head.
Rose turned into a strip mall parking
lot and made for the Starbucks. She dove into the bathroom first
thing, locked the door, and stripped off her shirt. She’d had it
all of half an hour—a modest turtleneck, fall flowers embroidered
in a pretty turn over the breast—and it was already stained with
red splatters. The sticky red was on her hands, too, but she had to
make do with just water, as the soap pump was out.
The smell in the room was a little
strong. How people could be so lazy about their work, she didn’t
know. She had half a mind to . . . well, there was no time
now.
She used her nails to scratch and
scrape at the black lines under her cuticles. Evidence was such a
trial. One hand was a little worse for wear. At first she thought
the knuckles were just swollen from the fight, but the bones seemed
different, too. Longer. The muscles were corded and sinewy, the
fingernails coarser. Didn’t look right. That hand, her bad hand,
she’d have to keep carefully hidden, or else people would
stare.
Reasonably clean, she drew on another
of her new shirts, a lovely pale yellow, like her sunny
nature.
When she emerged, a coffee was waiting
for her at the pickup counter. As she walked out the door a
customer yelled behind her, “Hey, that’s mine!” but Rose paid him
no mind. She made a point not to respond to uncouth behavior like
shouting. His mother should have taught him better. If he
persisted, Rose would.
She got back in her car feeling much
refreshed and looked down the street for signs of a freeway
entrance. Somewhere along the way she’d have to dump the body in
her trunk before it started to smell. Unclean things, bodies. Maybe
it’d be quicker to leave the car instead and find herself another,
something roomier that didn’t smell like cigarettes. She didn’t
want to keep Mickey waiting. Twelve years was enough, sweet man. A
green sign directed her to I-95 heading south.
But the kat in
Rose’s head said, That way! West.
Go that way!
And then she knew what the sound was.
She should have recognized it at once. The rattle had to be the
gate. No matter how far she ran, she’d never be free of Hell.
kat-a-kat: That way!
No. She accelerated to exit the
intersection. Before morning she could be in Mickey’s
arms.
kat-a-kat: Obey me.
Turn. Now.
It really wasn’t fair. All she wanted
to do was get back to her sweetheart—twelve
years!—before she was caught and sent back to the bad place.
And here the bad place was coming after her before she could do a
really good deed. A big one. Mickey would know just the
thing.
kat-a-kat: Kill a
woman, and you’ll never have to fear that place
again.
Rose eased her foot off the gas. “Any
woman?” That was easy. Women were everywhere. kat-a-kat: Layla Mathews.
“And I’ll be free?”
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
Her bad hand kept the steering wheel
steady while she whipped the car into a tight turn.
Open, empty road was before her, so
Rose closed her eyes. A quick stop, perhaps a difficult moment when
she’d have to take care of some unpleasantness, and then freedom.
Mickey. He’d be so happy to see her.