He didn't blink. That was the thing that threw me off the most—when John wasn't in motion, he was a statue; unmoving, unbreathing. And he didn't move much unless he had to, so most of the time, watching him was like staring at a war film on pause: a still frame of a soldier at ease, preparing for battle, interrupted by moments of horrific violence.
He was a man of extremes—except, I suppose he wasn't even technically a man. I had to keep reminding myself he wasn't a person, despite how he looked. He was an Other, supposedly the embodiment of several dozen soldiers, pressed together and given life. In the afternoon light, he looked downright normal. At night, things were different. Kennet became a different place, and John fit into that place in a way that was unnatural, inhuman.
Thankfully, the Thunder Bay newspaper had fixed its computer system, so I didn't have to take the time to bring a hard copy in person, because otherwise I'd have ended up doing all my patrols at night.
"What was it like?" John asked suddenly, leaning against a tree. "Fighting Behemoth?"
It was the fourth day of patrolling with John, and we were beginning to establish a rapport: him with his war stories, and me with mine. It was an easy rhythm with him, and something about the way we talked made it easier to get my words out. Sometimes I'd bring a notebook with me, and we'd take little breaks where I'd perch it on my knee and jot down a few lines as we went, to add to my memoirs later. He didn't seem to mind.
I scribbled down a few lines into my notebook.
This was the worst environment for me. There were bugs aplenty, but the area was thick with smoke, and there were fires everywhere.
"...I don't know if there are words to describe it," I said, tapping the tip of my pen. "It was like fighting a storm, but that doesn't even begin to cover it. It was like a natural disaster—a walking, living natural disaster that just grows and grows and never ends. When Behemoth attacks, we end up with death tolls in the tens of thousands, if we're lucky. Hundreds, if we're not. Whole cities are destroyed, left uninhabitable from radiation."
John just watched me from his spot under the forest canopy as I put my thoughts in order. Behemoth still felt so fresh in my head: that one burning eye, peering over the horizon. I had trouble remembering to do even the most basic things: calling my dad, keeping up with bills, even cooking or cleaning some days. But that last burning image of Behemoth standing over New Delhi? I didn't think it would ever leave me.
"All that's left are the corpses," I said. "You walk through the ashes, and you find them. People boiled alive, skin burnt off, limbs broken—I mean, you look at the pictures, watch the tapes, and you think you have an idea of what it's like. It's not even close. You don't get the smell. The ozone and smoke, cooked flesh. You don't get a sense of the mortality of it all. Lives are destroyed—even for the people who survive."
He was watching me intently, not blinking, but listening all the same. So I pushed on, still tapping my pen.
"So for me? It was all I could do just to keep up. Capes much stronger than me were getting annihilated, death tolls listed off so fast it became white noise. I mostly stuck to a coordinating role, tracking Behemoth with my bugs. Wasn't much else I could do, put up against an opponent of that caliber. And that was all I was supposed to do. They wanted me to keep out of trouble, keep out of the way, keep my new team alive." I shrugged. "But we needed an edge. So I found a way, discovered some unsavory characters who were planning something below the city. And I decided to meet with them. That was the game changer."
"Against orders," he said.
"Yeah. Like I said, we needed the edge. I was still on probation, didn't have a lot of trust vested in me… and the things I did, nobody was going to approve of. But it didn't matter. The decisions I made, the rules I broke, the people I crossed—it meant we won, in the end. We killed him."
He nodded silently.
"What about you?" I asked. "Anything like that for you?"
"Some."
"Yeah?"
It took a minute before he finally responded.
"There was one time in Kandahar," he said. "We were surrounded on all sides by enemy forces, caught in the middle of no man's land during a storm. Visibility was nil; couldn't see further than ten or fifteen feet. And the POI was on the opposite side of the street, behind an army of men. I could just barely see him through a window. They didn't know where we were, but the moment I pulled the trigger, I knew they'd be able to pinpoint us through the rain. We had no cover, no ammo, no backup. We'd die. I knew that. We all knew that. But what else can you do in that situation? You can run, try to retreat, use the rain as cover, let the mission go. Or…"
He shrugged.
"You take the shot," I said.
He nodded. "I took the shot. POI went down."
"And your teammates?"
"We knew the risks. It was a calculated split-second decision. These things happen."
"...Yeah," I said. "I get that." I'd been there more times than I could count. I set the pen aside, glancing back up at John. "You ever wonder if it was the right decision to make?"
He shook his head. "If you're asking if it was the moral choice, you're talking to the wrong person."
"I'm talking to you," I said. "You've been there, you've made the calls that most people never have to. What do you think?"
There was a pause.
"Lucy and Avery should be back soon," John said, standing up and walking off. He had a habit of avoiding the harder questions. He never said no, just removed himself completely and focused on the next big thing, which I supposed matched his whole aesthetic—the brooding soldier, with all emotional vulnerability covered up by action.
I sighed, following, stowing my notebook into my bag. "They're doing that thing with Snowdrop, you said?"
"Familiar ritual," he said, nodding, not looking my way.
I'd gotten a brief summary of what that was supposed to be—formalizing the relationship between an Other and a Practitioner, letting them share each others' power. And it was supposed to be permanent. I wasn't sure what Avery was getting out of the deal, but she and Snowdrop were clearly close friends, so I guessed that was enough for them.
Good for them, I supposed.
But with all three girls gone, the responsibility to keep the investigation going in Kennet fell to me, and I'd been gathering as much information as I could while under the watchful eye of the locals. It was slow going. I'd put together notes to compare against the girls' provided texts. I scribbled down everything I noticed in the margins of my notebook under the pretense of writing my memoirs.
At that thought, I took a quick look over the notes I'd put together so far, listing every Other I'd met.
Lis dropped by a lot, always insisting she wanted to help, but usually not managing to do anything productive. It wasn't exactly suspicious, but something about her presence needled me. According to the girls, she was a doppelganger: a changer, with the ability to shapeshift into the average of any group she picked. Under the right circumstances, she was definitely a threat, so I kept her on my radar.
Toadswallow was apparently a goblin, despite looking a lot more human than the other goblins I'd met. Goblins were obsessed with filth, but I guessed they came in different shapes and sizes, because Toadswallow was their leader, and was a lot cleaner than most of them. He'd stop by every now and then to ensure we weren't bothering his people too much. Nothing about him stood out as overly sketchy so far, but I didn't like him, his mannerisms. It felt like he was trying to hide something, and I couldn't figure out what. Out of all the goblins in town, he was the only one who was smart enough to be one of the conspirators, and I couldn't get that thought out of my head.
Cig was… a cigarette. I was struggling to even conceptualize him as a person, let alone a conspirator. He could glow brighter, wiggle slightly, and people could smoke him. Not exactly the most threatening Other in Kennet.
I felt stupid even considering him, but onto the suspect list he went.
Matthew and Edith were a couple, a pair—and in my head, I thought of them as a single unit. Edith was some sort of fire spirit, a blaster who could generate flames, her true form possessing the comatose body of some unfortunate girl. Something of the situation reminded me of Pretender and Alexandria, during the later days of Earth Bet. It wasn't a pleasant comparison to make.
Matthew was her husband, an ex-practitioner who'd lost his powers after using his own body to siphon off something called doom out of Edith. It took all his strength to keep her alive. It was a tragic little story between the two of them, but more importantly? It was method and motive. I'd heard that Practitioners and Other could get power by taking someone else out, beating them in some kind of conflict. Maybe murder was a way to gain power. Maybe Matthew had gotten a little too desperate while trying to stabilize Edith's body. Maybe he'd stepped over the line. It wasn't the craziest theory: Matthew had the experience, and Edith had the ability.
Crooked Rook, the old woman, refused to come near me altogether. Out of all of them, she seemed least likely to be one of the conspirators: she was outwardly hostile toward humans and Practitioners, didn't like my presence in the town, and despised the girls. I'd have expected the perpetrators to have more guile than that—but that didn't mean she wasn't against me. It made things complicated, having her as an open enemy. Every time I tried to suggest an idea to John or the council, she'd vetoed it without a second thought. I didn't know what her deal was, and it was going to be a pain in the ass to find out.
There were about a dozen more Others I hadn't encountered, but I didn't doubt I'd be seeing them soon. Kennet wasn't a big enough town for them to stay hidden forever. The only people who weren't suspects were the three girls and Snowdrop, because the girls hadn't even been Practitioners at the time of the murder.
Which left John, out of all of Kennet's residents I'd met so far. I'd gotten a pretty good impression of John over the last few days, which left me only two questions: was he a conspirator?
And, if I had to, could I take him?
If I had to answer the first question, I was leaning toward 'no'. He seemed way too straightforward to be a secret member of the bad guys, and I hadn't figured out any potential motives for him yet. But I knew looks could be deceiving, and I'd need to gather more information before I could really be sure.
As for the second question? He wasn't human, couldn't properly die, but he still had weaknesses. I'd gone through the girls' notes, the texts they'd sent me. He could be killed, temporarily, through mundane means. He'd come back after a day or two, but still—in a pinch, he could die. He was a fighter, tougher than any normal person would be, and was an expert marksman—but for all that, he was just a very talented soldier, and I'd faced worse than him before. I'd faced teams of men like that under Coil.
Yeah, I could take him. Probably.
"You think this whole murder business will be wrapped up soon?" I asked, following him along the dirt trail.
"Probably," he said. "If this drags on for much longer, it'll end, one way or another. Someone will have to step up to the role."
I didn't miss how his fingers brushed against his gun as he said that. "What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Someone's going to need to be the new Carmine," he said, without looking back.
"...Carmine?"
He stopped, motionless, before turning around to flash me an incredulous look. "...Did no one explain to you what the Carmine Beast was?"
I shrugged. "I guess it wasn't that important."
"It's extremely important," he said.
There was that feeling again: that sense of confusion, of being left in the dark. Out of all the things the girls had told me, they hadn't bothered to explain whatever the Carmine was. I didn't know if they thought it was too dangerous for me to know, or if they'd been bound by oath not to tell me, but either way, it pissed me off.
"So explain it to me," I said. "The Carmine Beast was… the person that was killed?"
He ran a hand through his hair and cursed in a language I didn't know. "She was a Judge," he said.
I pictured an old man in a white wig, except distorted to fit the general theme Others seemed to follow. "Meaning?"
"Sometimes there are disputes," he said. "People don't always agree on rules, on right and wrong."
"And Judges are there to mediate?"
He bit his lip. "In a sense. There's a hierarchy of Others," he said. "Different degrees of power and control. You follow?"
"Yeah."
"Judges are somewhere near the top. They're the big picture authority. They can decide smaller things, but they don't tend to do that often. Their decisions can affect whole regions, set precedents and laws. They preside over a lot of things—different judges have different domains."
"Then what was the Carmine's?"
John turned back toward the trail, beginning to walk off. "Violence," he said.
I frowned. Violence?
As quick as I could, I followed him, ducking under a branch. "Wait," I said. "So what does that mean, big picture? If she's dead? If her whole deal is violence, and she's gone?"
"It means the region is falling to violence. More blood, more chaos, more violent Others emerging. So someone needs to fill the seat," he said without looking back. "Keep order, contain it all. It's important enough that the other Judges will force matters if this isn't resolved by the end of the summer."
I didn't like the sound of that. "Force matters? How?"
"There'll be a contest. Whoever has the strongest claim will take the seat."
A contest. Of course. People would be fighting over the seat, jockeying to make it their own. Because if Judges had as much power as John was saying, the seat was a massive prize. It meant winning authority, gaining an insane amount of magical strength. It meant being able to do anything you wanted. And it meant that if the wrong person won, if the murderers won, they'd be untouchable. It would mean game over, that we were well and truly fucked.
"Are there any candidates in the running?" I asked.
"Yes," he said shortly.
"Who?"
He kept walking as if he hadn't heard me at all. I frowned, jogging a few steps to catch up.
"John," I said. "Who is it?"
Still, he wouldn't respond. I could've let it go, but there was something in his body language that screamed at me. There was something obvious that I was missing. I was being left in the dark again, when it was vital for me to have all the information. So I pushed.
"I'm asking for a third time," I said. "Threes have power, right? Tell me who the candidates are."
"That doesn't work for you," he said. "You're not a practitioner."
I quickened my pace, moving ahead of him so that I could turn around and see his face. "Sure, but I'm stubborn. I can make this annoying for you. And I need to know everything that I possibly can if I'm going to live in this town and help you guys out. So who is it, John?"
He sighed. For a few beats, he was silent.
"...Me," John said eventually. He refused to meet my eyes.
And there was the potential motive I was looking for. I should've guessed. John went on my list of suspects along with everybody else.
We reached the end of the trail, and I stopped a few steps away, careful not to tread too close to the perimeter of the town. I'd somehow damaged it just by walking through it, and I still didn't understand how that had happened. So for now I played it safe. I didn't want to give Kennet's locals any more reasons to distrust me.
"That's it for today," John said.
"Really? That was quick."
Each of our patrols had started in the afternoon, after I'd finished my day job writing my magazine articles, and had lasted until nightfall, give or take. But right now, the sun was still up, high in the sky. Was he kicking me out because I'd pushed him too hard? Made him suspicious?
"None of the defenses were damaged this time." He shrugged. "Some days are quieter than others."
"Is that a good sign? If things are getting calmer…?"
"It probably doesn't mean anything one way or the other," he said. "Your work today is done. You can go home now."
John moved to leave, but I held up my hand. I felt like I had just hit on something. I had a potential motive, but I needed more. To get a complete picture of him, not just the glimpses I got on our patrols. I needed to spend more time with John, see how he acted around others, watch for any cracks in his stories or his persona.
"Wait," I said. "Can I ask a favor?"
"What is it?"
"Since we've got time, do you mind introducing me to some of the Others I haven't met yet?"
"Why?"
"If I'm going to be a part of this town, I should get to know my neighbors. Make sure I don't step on anyone's toes, trample on anyone's turf—that kind of thing. Besides,they already know I'm here, and I may as well meet them face to face. I'd ask Lucy or Avery, but they're not here."
He thought about it. "Some of them might not want to meet you."
"That's fine. I saw the reception I got back at Matthew's house. I just feel like I should at least put in the effort. Meet some of them, put a good foot forward. Like…" I wracked my brain. It was hard to keep track of all of this—there were so many Others in this town, all with different origins and abilities. "Uh, Tashlit. She was the one who healed me, right? I should thank her."
John shook his head. "Tashlit's out of town right now. Watching over Verona."
"Oh. Someone else, then. Someone nearby?"
"We'd have to go some distance," he said. "The closest Others definitely don't want to see you. Have you been told about Nibble and Chloe?"
"They're… ghouls, right?" I asked, thinking back, running down the checklist in my mind. Ghouls were people who'd almost died in some way, were vulnerable to sunlight, and lived off of human flesh. They'd go feral, turn into mindless animals if they didn't get it—and I was a potential meal for them, if I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Letting them live in town seemed like an insane risk—they could lose their minds at any time, start devouring civilians, expose themselves to the wider world. And Kennet was a small town. How the hell were they supposed to get human flesh on a regular basis? It wasn't like people were dying every day around here, and it was a small enough community that someone would notice if a body went missing.
Still, it wasn't my problem. Let the local council deal with all that. All I had to worry about was the murder investigation.
He nodded. "They're living in an old factory up the way. Best if you give that place a wide berth."
I made a note of that in my mind. "Okay," I said. "Then pick somebody else. I don't care if it's further away—I've got time, and I don't mind a walk."
"Why are you so insistent about this?"
"Because I'm new in a town full of people who don't really like me, and I feel like if I don't change that, I'll come back to bite me in the ass. Because I'm learning that spirits and ghouls and goblins are real, and I'd really like to see them with my own eyes. There are so many reasons to do it, so why are you so against it?"
It was suspicious, to say the least. Like he was intentionally keeping me in the dark, so I'd be less able to help the girls; so I'd be less equipped, less proactive, with less agency. Like Coil, like Hearthrow. Like Miss.
His fingers brushed against his holstered gun again, and I tensed. Was he going to shoot me? Could he even do it, with the oaths the town had all made? But the moment passed, and he relaxed. "It's dangerous," he said.
"Everything's dangerous," I said. "There's a fucking murderer running around town somewhere, plotting, making moves. That's why I'm asking to meet people—the more I know, the less vulnerable I am."
"It's dangerous for you," he amended. "There are people in Kennet who'd love to see you gone. Did you notice the terms that Matthew gave you?"
"What about them?"
"There's nothing in them that prevents anyone in Kennet from killing you," he said. "Nothing at all. Matthew said that he'd try to look into your problem with your patron, and that's it. So if he decided that your death was a potential solution, then it would be on the table. If a majority of the town voted that you were a threat, they could eliminate you."
My eyes narrowed. "You're telling me that someone in town wants me dead?"
"I'm saying that it's a possibility, and that your arrival in Kennet set a lot of people on edge. If someone wanted you out of the way, they could do it. It wouldn't be easy for them, but it wouldn't be too hard, either."
"I wouldn't go down without a fight."
"You wouldn't have a choice—not if you wanted to keep Lucy, Avery, and Verona safe. You already promised to support the town, staked on the reputation of our three practitioners, remember? If the town decides that killing you is in our best interest, retaliating would be working against Kennet. The girls would be forsworn."
My hand strayed toward my bag, slipping deeper in until I felt the cold brush of metal under my fingers. My taser. "And you? What do you want?"
"I don't want to see that happen. And you seem okay to me," he said, eyes unmoving. "Unlikely to be a threat to Kennet."
My fingers wrapped around the taser. "But?"
"There's no but," he said. "I don't want to see you harmed. I don't have any plans to hurt you at the moment, and unless you give me a serious reason to change that, I'm not planning on doing so any time in the future."
I thought about it, went through the implications of what he'd said. It didn't mean that I was safe from him—but at least I knew where I stood with him. I released the taser, pulling my hand out of my bag.
"Then introduce me to people," I said. "Please. You want to make sure I don't get hurt? Keeping me blind to the threats around me is a bad way to handle that. I'm already too deep into this for innocence to protect me, and I don't want to accidentally give people more reasons to want me dead. Better if I've got all the relevant intel, right? If I know what lines not to cross?"
He ran a hand through his hair, sighing. "...Okay. Fine. Let's go."
And with that, he set off back down the path, and I followed closely. The hiking trail was dead, as always. It was one of those dirt paths that saw maybe one visitor every other week, barely maintained, overgrown with gnarled roots and thorny brambles. I was lucky that I'd worn thicker cargo pants today.
"How's your head feeling?" John asked.
"Better." I had the hat with me, but I hadn't needed it today. The headaches had eased off since waking up in Matthew' house, and in the last two days, I hadn't felt even a trickle of pain. I didn't know if that was a good sign, or if it was just the calm before the storm, some kind of lull before my passenger renewed its efforts in earnest.
I really, really hoped that wasn't the case.
"That's good," John said. "You'll want to be at your best when you're meeting the Faerie."
I frowned. "Faerie—that's, uh, Guilherme and Maricica, right?"
He nodded. I'd read up on them, but my memory of the details was muddled. There was so much to go over that I'd skimmed most of it. "Anything I should know?"
"Fae play with humans," John said. "They deal in stories. So you'd better be careful, because you don't have a practitioner's defenses, and I get the impression that you'd make for one hell of a story."
"Maybe," I said. "But it wouldn't be a very happy one."
"Don't tell them that," he said sharply. "Fae tend to love those stories the most."
Of course they did. "The myths I've heard—are they true? Stealing names, replacing people's kids, that kind of thing?"
"All of that and more. Making twisted deals, enslaving humans, driving people insane—all of that is on the table when you're interacting with a fae. Be extremely careful what you say and do around them, because they plan far, far ahead with their stories. The smallest things they do can set up chain reactions that screw you over weeks or years or decades from now."
Like the Simurgh, but in miniature, I thought. I'd had enough of the Simurgh's victims blowing up at the worst moments, stabbing me in the back where it hurt most. I could still remember her scream, sometimes. If I had to go through it again…
"Is it really safe to let them stay in Kennet, if that's what they're like?"
"They have power," he said simply. "Kennet needs power to survive."
We ended up around a darker part of the forest, where the shadows were longer than they should've been, bending in strange and unnatural ways. Maybe I was imagining it, but the sun itself seemed different, miscolored, like it was several different shimmering colors that balanced out in an imitation of yellow. Ahead of us was a cave, barely visible through all the brush, shrouded in pitch darkness. It was impossible to see any further than a few inches inside, like the light itself was being absorbed by something.
I reached into my bag and gripped my taser, fingernails raking against cold metal. We were in the lion's den now, almost literally.
But before we reached it, a man emerged from the brush ahead of us. Seeing him, I was immediately put off, and my brain jumped to threat. He looked like a homeless guy, wild and dirty hair, clothes stained and torn. He was the kind of guy you'd see on TV and think, axe murderer. I nearly pulled my weapon on him.
"Charles," John supplied helpfully.
I gritted my teeth, still holding the taser firmly. I'd heard of Charles. He was the local practitioner who'd supposedly lost all of his power and karma after breaking an oath, being forsworn. It explained, in part, why I didn't like him. Apparently having bad karma affected that kind of thing, forcing others to view you in the worst possible light.
And something about that set me the wrong fucking way—the idea that some mysterious unseeable force was altering my perceptions of him, like a master effect thrown over the whole world. Even when I tried to fight the impulse to distrust him, that sense of disgust when I looked at him, I couldn't overcome it.
I tried to rationalize it, organize all the positives in my mind—that he was once Kennet's protector, that he'd set up the perimeter in the first place, that his current appearance was only because of bad luck and hardship—but it didn't help. No amount of logic would cut through the haze. The only thing I could do was to treat him extra generously to compensate, and even that was a crapshoot.
Fuck, I hated master effects.
"John," Charles said, nodding. "Hello." Then he turned to me. "Ah, you're that Hebert girl."
"I think I'm a little old to be called a girl," I said, the words slipping out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. Goddamn it.
"Not what I meant." He sighed. "You're the superhero, right?"
"Yeah. You could call me that." I took a breath and forced a polite smile. "Good to meet you."
He nodded. "Sorry I wasn't here to welcome you in. I've been busy. You're here to see the Faerie?"
"That's right."
"I wouldn't, if I were you. It's not a good idea," he said. "It's dangerous."
"Yeah, I've been told. But John's escorting me, and… it looks like you were meeting them," I pointed out. "As far as I know, my karma's a lot better than yours is."
He barked out a laugh.
"What?" I asked, frowning.
"I had good karma once, too, you know. It still only took a single day for me to lose everything I had. Karma isn't a foolproof defense, Ms. Hebert. Remember that."
And with that, he pushed by us, disappearing down the path.
"That was… ominous," I said to John.
"He tends to have that way with people," John said. "But he wasn't wrong. This isn't safe. I'm only taking you here because you wouldn't let go. And if you're gonna meet anyone, I think it's important for you to know the kind of people you'd be up against, if things went wrong."
"It's a risk, I know. But so was agreeing to stay here. Better I meet the faerie under controlled circumstances, with you at my side, than when things are more hectic and I'm alone."
He nodded, leading me up to the mouth of the cave. "Guilherme," he called out. "Maricica. I've come with Taylor Hebert, to oversee an introduction between you three."
For a moment, nothing happened. And then the shadows in the cave seemed to grow darker, blacker than coal. A tongue of ink stretched out of the mouth of the cave like an unfurling carpet and out onto it stepped a beautiful, naked woman. She had inhumanly sharp features, her form wreathed in two massive butterfly wings; light brown, almost translucent. She was lithe, abnormally tall in a way that reminded me of Campanile, towering multiple heads over both me and John.
Of course she had to be a butterfly woman. The universe had a sense of irony, after all. First the body-jacking bug Other, now a manipulative butterfly lady. It would've been funny if it weren't so annoying.
The fact that she was naked threw me off a little, but I'd spent enough time around Narwhal that it didn't bother me too much. What did bother me was her gaze—the way her eyes followed me a step ahead of my motions, like she had some kind of preternatural sense, a kind of minute precognition granted through pure intelligence and confidence.
"Hello, John," the woman said, grinning.
"Maricica," John nodded. "Where's Guilherme?"
She laughed, like ringing bells, just out of tune. Discordant. "Out. He had business."
"And you didn't come with him?"
She approached us, waving a hand. "Oh, it was boring," she said. "An attempt to avert his fate. Pointless, of course. Doomed to failure, with or without my help. Besides, I'd say there are more interesting affairs happening right here, wouldn't you agree, little superhero?"
So this was a fae: all pretty looks and honeyed words.
"I haven't been a superhero in a long time," I said.
She tilted her head. "And yet you bear the tools of one." She smiled knowingly. "I'm Maricica. Might I have your name?"
An obvious trap. I scowled. "Very funny."
She put a hand to her lips in mock surprise. "That's a strange name for a human."
"You know what I meant," I said. "You can call me Taylor."
She nodded, still grinning as if she hadn't just brazenly tried to fuck me over. Was that her idea of a joke? "Well met, Taylor."
I grit my teeth. She annoyed me in the worst kind of way, but I needed to stand my ground. I had information to gather. "You said Guilherme was out? Trying to…change his fate? What did you mean by that?"
"His fall to the Winter Court," she said dismissively. "An inevitability."
I turned to John. "What does that mean?"
John bit his lip. He clearly didn't love interacting with Maricica any more than I did. "Faerie belong to different courts," he said. "With different qualities and histories associated with each. Winter is…"
"Boredom," Maricica said. "Stasis. When the well of fresh stories grows dry, a Faerie loses themself to pattern and repetition, becoming nothing more than a repeating pattern themselves. A machine, without creativity." She grinned wide. "Guilherme is terrified of it."
John didn't contradict her, which meant she was probably telling the truth. And if she was… that was a motive for Guilherme as well. If he was terrified of losing himself, falling apart, becoming a shadow of himself, that could've motivated him to come after the Carmine's power.
But she was a fae, I reminded myself. She could've brought this up just to insert that idea into my head. Faerie were manipulative.
"But enough of that," Maricica said. "What brings you to my abode, little superhero?"
"I'm here to learn about my neighbors. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself, establish myself as a member of the town."
"Yourself?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "Or your patron?"
My pulse quickened. Was she talking about my passenger? "What?"
"I'm referring to that hat you keep touching," she said innocently. "The one in your bag?"
I realized I'd been leaning my hand against the hat in my bag. I pulled it away, as if I had been burned. "What about it? It's my hat."
"It's a hat," she said. " A very… interesting item. But yours? It doesn't suit you, I think. It clashes with your aesthetic. No, I don't believe it is your hat. I believe it was given to you."
"So what?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
"Just making an observation," she said sweetly. "John, what do you think?"
He shrugged.
"Stoic as always." She swept her gaze back to me. "My point is that the hat does not seem to represent you. It seems to represent someone else. And my, what an interesting revelation that is."
Immediately, Maricica jumped to the top of my list of suspects. She was digging for information, looking for something to hang me with. And she knew about Miss.
"I'm trying to branch out a little," I said, keeping an even expression. "Experimenting with fashion."
She laughed. "Mm, I suppose you are." But there was a pointed look in there that said more than words. "Be careful that you don't end up caught in a web of your own making, superhero."
I frowned, trying to read her expression. What the hell did that mean?
Before I could respond, my phone rang, startling me. The two Others watched intently as I pulled it from my bag.
Erica. My supervisor.
"I've got to take this," I said.
"Be my guest," Maricica said. John shook his head, but I didn't know whether it was because I'd just made some kind of verbal mistake, or if it was just because I was interrupting a conversation with a fairy tale creature to talk to my boss.
I walked down the path until I was reasonably sure they couldn't hear me, and answered the phone. "Erica?"
"Taylor, hey! I've been trying to get ahold of you, but my calls kept getting dropped."
"I've been hiking," I said. "Bad reception out here. Why? What's up?"
"Remember that article you sent me this morning? Well, the network got corrupted again, so I'm going to need you to print me out another copy."
"What, seriously? I thought it was fixed."
"It was, but then something else went and chewed up the whole damn thing a second time. No idea what happened—we thought we were good! I'm starting to think we're cursed. Anyway, sorry, I need you to come in again."
"Alright," I said. "I'll try to drop by before you close up tonight."
"Thanks, Taylor. And, uh, you're probably actually going to have to come into the office for article submissions for the foreseeable future. We're looking for a new IT guy to fix all this, and it's taking a while."
"Wait, what? What happened to the old guy?"
"Don't know. He just disappeared, stopped answering his calls and emails. Straight to voicemail every time. No idea what's going on with him. Anyway—got to get back to work. I'll see you soon?"
"Yeah," I said, frowning. "See you." I hung up and stuffed the phone back in my bag.
Verona's dad was missing. With everything else happening in Kennet, there's no way that was a coincidence. The girls had told me that after what he'd done to Verona—I hadn't gotten the full picture, but it was something abusive—he was supposed to attend meetings with lawyers, with family services. If that was the reason he was skipping work, wouldn't he have told his employers? Said something about a family emergency?
He didn't seem like the type to just vanish off the face of the earth. No, there had to be something else going on. I was going to have to look into it as soon as I could. Tonight.
As I returned to the mouth of the cave, John gave me a look—something like a warning. It was time to go, and I didn't disagree.
"Sorry," I said. "I've got to leave."
"Of course," Maricica said smoothly. "But first, before you go, I have an offer for you."
I frowned. "I'm not interested."
"Oh, I can guarantee you that's a lie. I think you'll be very interested in what I have to say. That hat of yours, the one that was gifted to you—it hurts you to use it, doesn't it?"
I froze. "So what?" I asked.
"That trinket of yours won't last forever. I'm sure it's effective at what it does, but it's ephemeral by nature. Temporary."
"Get to the point," I said.
"My, my," Maricica said, her smirk widening. "Someone is touchy. But—as you wish. I know about your little parasite problem. Matthew may have experience but, I'll tell you now: he is very, very unlikely to find a way to solve the matter. He does not have the expertise in the right fields to be able to help, and he no longer has the connections he needs to recruit others for your cause. So I'm offering to present you a solution of my own, guaranteed to work. A permanent one."
My pulse quickened, but I kept my expression as neutral as possible. "No thanks."
She leaned in, whispering in my ear. "Don't you want to at least hear the details?"
I tried to push her away, but it was like trying to push a brick wall. "Like you'd be able to do anything."
She laughed, an almost musical tone to her timbre. "I'm a fae, my dear. We have ways."
My pulse quickened. One treacherous thought ran through my mind: they couldn't lie.
They couldn't lie.
But it was a trap. It had to be. She was a fae, and I'd heard stories about fae. Kidnapping children. Twisting others. John had said they drove people insane. I slipped away from her, retreating two steps down the path, toward John. "I'm not interested."
"Yet," she said, baring her teeth. "We'll see how you feel in a few months' time, when true desperation sets in, and you find yourself at the end of your rope. And you'll think to yourself: all I have to do is give one simple thing."
I scowled. "Yeah? What's that? My soul?"
She laughed again. "Nothing so grandiose," she said. "An apology."
An apology for what? What the hell did that mean? No—it didn't matter, because I wouldn't be taking her offer. I shook my head. "No deal."
Maricica only smiled. "The offer remains on the table," she said. "And you'll be back."
As we trudged down the path back home, I couldn't help but turn around to stare—and the last I saw of Maricica was her smile gleaming in the darkness, teeth bared, like the grin of the Cheshire Cat.
