Kitty Steals the Show

Chapter 21

CORMAC SUGGESTED moving into the open, to make it easier for the Fae to hear us. We deferred to his wisdom. Hyde Park was a few blocks down the main road from the hotel. I kept touching my phone, checking for calls that I might have missed, but hadn’t. No one had called to say that they’d found Tyler and everything was okay. The sun was sinking, the shadows growing longer, twilight threatening. The vampires would be awake soon, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The park was as gorgeous as ever, a startling oasis in the middle of the city. Joggers were out, along with people walking home after work, and others playing with dogs who looked at us askance, ears flattened, knowing something was off about us. One, a bristly German shepherd, barked until his owner pulled him away, giving us a muddled apology, Bruce wasn’t normally so rude, and so on. We avoided the dogs as best we could.

Cormac led us to an out-of-the-way glade, near a stand of trees, and—a statue of Peter Pan, depicted as a slender, elfin child playing a pipe. He might have brought us to the spot on purpose.

Cormac pulled the scarf out of a jacket pocket and handed it over. It tingled in my hand. Was it just the shimmering texture of the fabric, or something more?

“What do I do now?”

“It’s the Fae. Make a wish,” he said.

“Just like that?” Ben said.

Coiling the scarf around my hands, I closed my eyes and thought about finding Tyler. Wished I could find him, right now, nearby, whole and unharmed. I drew a breath, smelled the grass, trees, the contained nature of the park hemmed in by the odor of city. Heard traffic, footsteps, a barking dog. Ben and Cormac standing still, breathing softly. It all felt so incongruously calm.

Something hit me from behind, like someone shoving in a crowd. I jumped and looked.

The young women from the conference and the restaurant, the ones who’d started the whole thing, stood arm in arm, looking at me, grinning wide, their big eyes shining. Daisy and Rose.

“Where’d they come from?” Ben hissed, looking around in a panic.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said a newcomer, who also seemed to have appeared from thin air, but might have walked from behind the stand of trees, except that I hadn’t heard or smelled her coming. And I’d been listening.

Wearing a beaded skirt, a shapeless blouse, a shawl that seemed to be made of flower petals, and an annoyed expression creasing her elfin face, she was the regal woman from the other night. Now, at dusk instead of full dark, she reminded me of sunshine and distant meadows. Her clothing seemed old-fashioned but new at the same time. Her hair appeared to have flowers woven in it, but I couldn’t tell what kind. They were tiny, and shimmered.

“I need help,” I said starkly, holding her scarf out to her.

“You mean you’re not going to ask for a castle or a bag of gold? Hmm.”

“Would we have waited to ask if we were?”

“Yes, of course. You’re the clever kind. At least, you are,” she said to Cormac, who remained standing quietly with his hands in his pockets. “You and the one inside your head.”

He narrowed his gaze and pursed his lips.

“Can you help?” I asked.

“Help with what?”

Focus, had to focus. It wasn’t easy. “A friend is missing. Joseph Tyler, he’s a werewolf, he’s been kidnapped. A lot of people are looking for him, but he could be anywhere. Can you get him back?”

“And that’s your wish? To get him back?”

“Yes. Rescue him. Alive, safely, in one piece, and sane.” I blinked earnestly, hoping I’d covered all the bases.

She smirked. Clearly, I was pushing.

“Your wish is to retrieve one soul in this whole wide city,” she stated, making it sound like a done deal. I glanced at Cormac, hoping for confirmation that this was good, that I was doing it right. He hadn’t said anything, so I had to be reassured that I wasn’t inadvertently selling my soul. I could see how it would be easy to do. She seemed so nice.

“Hand it over,” she said, holding out her hand, shaking it. I laid the scarf across her palm.

She flourished the fabric and tossed it into a pocket—or somewhere. At any rate, it was gone. Clapping her hands, she called, “Girls. Call the troops. Werewolf in trouble. Go!”

The two—henchwomen? Sidekicks?—ran, but I couldn’t have described exactly where they went. The woman smiled as if pleased. I hesitated to ask any other questions.

“Shall we look at the stars?” She settled onto the grass, lying prone, looking up. The sky had darkened to a royal blue, but I couldn’t see any stars past the glow of the surrounding city.

We hesitated, but she pointed to the ground insistently, and how could we refuse?

We must have looked ridiculous, the three of us looking on, awkward and uncertain, with this odd woman lying in the grass, her clothing splayed around her.

“Is this really going to work?” Ben leaned toward me to whisper.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Cormac?”

“Hard to say. Anything can happen.”

I took out my phone; still no calls. I had to resist calling Nick and Caleb yet again; it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes since the last time I called. They wouldn’t have found anything new.

“Look, there! The evening star!” The fairy queen pointed off at a forty-five-degree angle.

I wouldn’t have thought any stars would be visible in the middle of the city, but she’d found one, a single point of light, twinkling. Like a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Actually, I think it’s an airplane,” Ben whispered.

“Oh, fie.” She pouted.

I lasted about five seconds before I started tapping my feet. I cleared my throat a little. “Do you have any idea how long—”

“Everyone’s looking,” she said. “It’s hard in the city, with all its iron. We cope—it’s better than the alternative, after all. But these things take time. You know, it isn’t that we’re particularly good at granting wishes, or finding things or, well, anything. Playing tricks, maybe. But we pay attention. We find the loose thread that everyone else misses and tug. It makes us look so very clever.”

We three humans clumped together and waited.

“Amelia’s loving this,” Cormac said.

“At least someone is,” I muttered.

The sound of laughter filtered from … somewhere … and the two giggling women tumbled onto the grass next to their mistress. Again, I couldn’t have said where they came from, just that they arrived.

The queen sat up and put her hands on her hips. “Well? Where is he?”

One of them scrunched up her face, almost tearful. “It’s full of iron, we can’t get any closer!”

“Fie,” the queen said. “But you found him? Show me where,” the queen said. The three of them huddled together, faces bent. I couldn’t hear a thing. When she looked up again, she seemed determined. The two junior fairies beamed with pride.

“You couldn’t get him,” I said.

She held her chin, eyes crinkled with thought. “There has to be a way, I can’t just leave a wish hanging like this.”

“Um … can you tell me where they found him?” I said. “That’ll be good enough.”

Someone jogged on the path, and I froze, wondering how I was going to explain all this, but he never turned his head.

“You’re saying I just have to tell you where he is, not fetch him.”

“That’s right.” Hurry, hurry …

She said, “It’s down the river at least five hops, then you have to wiggle up a bit, to one of the places where there isn’t a single tree left—”

Cormac pulled a map from his jacket pocket, unfolding as he went. “You think you could point to it?”

Her gaze darted over it and she pursed her lips. “Hmm. How novel.” After a moment, she pointed. “There.”

Well east of the city, downriver. Just a spot on a map.

I frowned. “I don’t suppose you have an address?”

She crossed her arms and pouted. “Addresses, bah. By the way, have you asked yourself whether or not I might be lying?” She was smiling, but it wasn’t pretty.

“I’d be no worse off than I was before,” I said, and she slouched, the wind taken out of her sails. Wings? She didn’t seem to have wings, not that I could see anyway. I sighed. “This has to be right. Thank—” Cormac squeezed my arm and shook his head. You didn’t thank fairies. Hmm.

“Right. This’ll work,” I said, and the queen offered a brief, mysterious bow.

I called Caleb. “I think I have a location for you. A place called Creekmouth?”

His voice sounded tinny, distant, like he was in a car. “It’s an industrial park, part of the port system. That’s not good,” he said. “Where’d you get this information? How do you know he’s there?”

“Um … fairies told me?”

He sounded surprised. “And you trust ’em?”

“They owed me a wish.”

“Ah, right,” he said.

“You believe me? Or, you believe in fairies?” I asked.

“I knew they were out there,” Caleb said. “Though it doesn’t do for a bloke like me to run around saying he believes in fairies. The thing you’ve got to remember about them—they’re not human, so don’t think you understand them. You, me, Ned, Marid, all of us—we all started out human and were changed. We might turn out quite different, but you can still suss us out at the heart of it. But them? They never were human.”

“We’ve been having this conference on the paranormal and we missed this whole part of it that isn’t even human?”

“Not my concern,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Hyde Park,” I said. “The Peter Pan statue.”

“Typical,” he huffed. “Walk north, you’ll end up at the Lancaster Gate tube stop, we’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”

“How far away is this place?”

“It’ll take time to get there,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of people I can send to scout ahead.”

It would have to be enough. I shut off the phone and looked around to say good-bye to the queen and her folk, but they were gone.

I blinked at Cormac and Ben. “Where’d they go?”

“Vanished. Poof,” Ben said, flicking out his fingers.

“Just like that?” I said.

“Hard to tell,” Cormac said. “I wasn’t quite looking at them.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “I thought I just glanced away for a minute.”

That shouldn’t have surprised me at all. “We have to get moving, Caleb’s going to pick us up.”

Nightfall gave the mission even more urgency—we’d be dealing with vampires soon. Njal would know that Harald and his mate had left him. Other vampires would call on werewolves who were no longer there.

When we got to the intersection, the lights and traffic nearly blinded me after the relative peace and darkness of the park. I spotted Caleb when he flashed headlights, and we piled into the back of the car. Michael, one of Caleb’s wolves, occupied the front passenger seat. They nodded at us in acknowledgement.

“You all right?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah. For now. How are Harald and his mate?”

“Her name’s Karin. Poor kid, too scared to even talk, but she seems relieved to be here. They’re safe, still resting. I’ve got someone staying with them who’s very good at this sort of thing.”

“Good.” I sighed.

Caleb knew his way around the city and steered confidently through the maze of streets. I was lost in moments. Nothing in this city was set up on grids. I imagined London’s citizens laying out medieval streets based on curving them around random trees, barrels, horses, whatever, that they didn’t want to bother moving. What other explanation could there be? He managed to avoid the worst of the evening traffic, until we were on a wide—even relatively straight—highway. The central congestion of the city gave way to suburbs, parks, industrial sections, dockyards. I caught glimpses of the river now and then, a wide, dark band reflecting lights.

The phone rang. Now I hear from everyone. “Hello?”

“Kitty. Ned here. We have some catching up to do, I think.”

“Yeah. I don’t even know where to start.”

“I’m hearing some very odd rumors. Did you really rescue those two wolves from Njal?”

“I guess we did,” I said, bemused.

“I’m getting visits, calls—foreign Masters wanting to know if I’ve really withdrawn neutrality, why Masterless wolves are running around, why their own wolves are standing up to them, asking them to keep out of the war. They’ve been talking to each other, haven’t they? And Vidal of St. Petersburg asked if I’ve really killed Roman. I admit I was cagey with him, and he seemed so pleased … Whatever you did this morning has everyone flustered.”

I closed my eyes, enjoying a second’s worth of victory. No one knew what was happening—our enemies couldn’t unite. We’d bought ourselves time. Maybe even allies. Any of the Masters who’d been waiting to see who was stronger in the coming conflict might side with Ned, now.

“I hope … I hope this works out,” I said.

“‘Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage,’” he said. “Where are you and your pack now?”

“In a car with Caleb, heading east to look for a friend who’s gone missing.”

“Your Sergeant Tyler, yes? What happened?”

“He was kidnapped out of his hotel room earlier this afternoon. We’re following a lead that says they’ve taken him to Creekmouth.”

“That isn’t good.”

“That’s what Caleb says.”

“You’ll need help.”

“Any you can spare. But you’ll never get there in time, they have a huge head start, it’s miles away—”

“Oh, have no fear at all about that.” His tone held a wicked smile.

“What—”

He hung up. I stared at my phone.

“That was Ned,” Ben said, a statement. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, frowning. I wanted to blame my exhaustion and muzzy-headedness on jet lag but wasn’t sure I still could, a week later.

While I’d talked to Ned, Caleb had gotten a call, and had driven the last mile or so with his phone pressed to his ear. He put it in a pocket and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I think we’ve found him. But we don’t have a lot of time.”

“What? Why not, what’s happening?”

“I told you there’s a shipping dock—they may be trying to smuggle him out of the country.”