No Promises, page 4
Now I was studying the town of Hawthorne itself. It was an interesting place, to say the least. From what I had been able to glean from a few hours of internet browsing, the town had a reputation for unexplained happenings—hauntings, the occasional Bigfoot sighting, even a report of a leprechaun. It seemed everyone who had been to Hawthorne knew someone there who had seen a ghost, or lost objects they knew they couldn’t have misplaced, or heard voices out of nowhere. It was also known for bringing its residents wild swings of luck—both good and bad. In Hawthorne, it was commonplace for businesses to go from struggling to wildly successful in a matter of days—and crash equally abruptly, for as little reason.
The more I looked, the clearer a picture emerged. And that picture didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about our destination. When people went looking for magic and mystery in New England, Salem was the town that got all the attention, where the locals made a lucrative game out of it. People would drive up to Salem for a day, visit a half-dozen witch-themed shops, and go home smiling and clutching their souvenirs. But when Hawthorne came up in conversation, those same people would laugh nervously and change the subject. They would take the long way around to make sure they didn’t drive through, although few would admit to the reason. Instead, they would give an excuse like, “I know this way is longer, but I want to make sure I can visit that little restaurant my aunt told me about.”
I closed the latest page I had been reading—a woman’s account of her great-grandmother’s supposed love affair with a ghost in Hawthorne a hundred years ago—and tapped Vicantha’s shoulder to get her attention. Her whole body jerked. Her hands clamped down on my wrist so hard that for half a second, I was afraid she might tear my arm in two.
I tried to tug my hand away. As soon as she released her grip, I pulled it back to my lap. I gestured toward the laptop, which now showed a site titled Weird Hawthorne. “Do these things happen in all places near Faerie portals?”
“What things?” From the sound of it, Vicantha should have accepted that vomit bag.
I started to edge away from her, then reconsidered when I realized that if I moved any further away, it would put me up against the wall. Yes, there was a layer of plastic between me and the bones of the aircraft, but that plastic was too thin for comfort.
“Strange swings of luck,” I answered. “Supernatural occurrences.”
“Only… major portals,” Vicantha mumbled. “Humans… used to have the sense… to stay away.”
I switched tabs. If it was a known consequence of the portal, reading about “weird Hawthorne” wasn’t going to get me anything I didn’t already know. “What were the names of those missing agents again?”
In her queasy voice, Vicantha listed off five long and flowing fae names. I didn’t have to look at the social media site I had open in front of me to know I wouldn’t find anything like those names in the human world. But I looked anyway, killing another few minutes browsing through Hawthorne-specific communities, creating fake accounts to get myself in when necessary.
“Do you have any idea what they were going by in the human world?” I asked. I couldn’t be the only one who went by an alias. Or several.
Vicantha managed to shoot me a glare through her slitted eyes. “Still… not convinced… they were here voluntarily. Let alone here long enough to establish false identities.” Her glare hardened, even though I hadn’t given any reaction. “And don’t use that term again.”
I thought back over what I had said, and frowned. “What term?”
“Human world. It was ours first. You…” She winced and clutched her belly as the plane lurched. “You made us retreat from this world to Faerie, when you crawled from the muck and started spreading over the land like an infection.”
“If I have my history right, you were born from the magic of Faerie,” I said. “It’s not our fault you decided you liked the look of our world better. And you had a long time to rule over the humans before they gained the ability to defend themselves. I’m not old enough to remember your glory days—not quite—but my family had plenty of stories. If we’re bringing up old resentments, I’m sure the humans could more than match you.”
“Still not your world. Don’t speak as if it is. Names confer respect. Humanity hasn’t earned it.”
“What did you call this world when you ruled it?” I asked.
Vicantha gave as much of a shrug as she could without shifting position. “Nothing. It was the world. Faerie was only ever its spiritual echo. It was never meant to be—” Whatever she had planned on saying next was cut off when she wrapped her arms around herself, keening softly. The plane hadn’t lurched again, but I understood what she was feeling. I could feel it too, even if only as the slightest echo of what she was experiencing. With every hour, with every minute, the walls were pressing closer. My chest was tight enough that every breath felt like a minor achievement.
The white-haired lady in the seat across from us looked over with a concerned frown. “Are you all right? Do you need a drink of water?”
“Attend to your own business, mortal,” Vicantha snapped, cheeks flushed with what I guessed was embarrassment at having shown weakness—in front of a human, no less. “This is not your concern.” Then she winced, as if realizing too late that her instinctive response hadn’t been the correct one. “I’m all right. I’m not used to flying.”
The woman drew back as far as she could without bumping into her seatmate. She grabbed the magazine from the pocket in front of her, opened it on her lap—upside down—and stared down at it, as if trying to prove to Vicantha that she was no threat. Her hands shook.
A flight attendant rushed up to us, drawn by the raised voices. “Is everything all right over here?” She took one look at Vicantha and held out yet another vomit bag.
“We’re fine,” I said hastily, before Vicantha could speak.
She nodded, clearly unconvinced. But the woman across from us didn’t say anything, so in the end, all the flight attendant said was, “You should put your laptop away. We’ll be landing soon.”
The skin around the wounds on my chest stretched painfully as I bent to slip the laptop back into my bag. Even after I got off the plane, there was no telling how long it would take them to heal, not with the remnants of the iron dust still floating around in my veins. I had no idea how long it would take to wear off, since I had never been masochistic enough to test it on myself. What I wanted was to soak away my aches in a hot tub, a White Russian or several beside me, and then sleep until noon and wake with the sun beating down on me full-force through the skylight. What I was going to get was Massachusetts in winter and Vicantha’s constant presence beside me.
Three days, I reminded myself. Three days before I had my life back.
As long as I managed to pull off something I had never done before, and find these missing fae. Otherwise, three days from now I would be in the process of dying one of the cruelest deaths imaginable as my own magic turned on me.
We narrowly managed to land without Vicantha losing the contents of her stomach. But by the time we touched down at Logan, violent jerks were running through her body, once every few seconds. She had her knees pulled up to her chest. When a flight attendant told her to put her feet down, she snarled with such force that the woman jogged back down the aisle without another word, feet quick and head ducked low.
I couldn’t look at Vicantha without feeling my body lock up in sympathetic pain. I stared out the window instead.
I kept reminding myself that she had chosen this.
When the doors opened, we joined the press of people streaming off the plane. For a moment, I had the thought of losing her in the crowd. Then, of course, I remembered that if I lost track of her and cost myself the ability to give her the information, it wouldn’t be an escape so much as an unnecessarily painful form of suicide. But apparently she hadn’t connected those same dots in her head. As soon as we stepped off the plane and the surging crowd behind us threatened to break us apart, she clamped her hand down on my wrist. Her fingernails dug in so hard I was surprised when I looked down and didn’t see droplets of blood pooling around them. Every touch of her fingertips was a tiny pinprick of ice.
The airport we had flown out of had been sunny and expansive, designed to put tourists at ease and lull them into spending their money. Logan, on the other hand, reminded me of a well-worn carpet, frayed at the edges and discolored from years of road dust, in the hallway of a building where important decisions were made about people’s stock portfolios. That was the best way I could think to describe the strange but somehow logical mix of shabbiness and corporate efficiency. Every few minutes, an announcement about flights delayed due to snow echoed off the walls, drowned out by shouts and hurrying footsteps. The air smelled like fish, which didn’t make much sense to me until we passed a sit-down seafood restaurant that seemed to be doing a brisk business.
“We’ll need to make arrangements for temporary accommodations,” said Vicantha as we followed the signs for the exit. Her voice still sounded shaky. “What do you call them? Hotels?”
I shook my head. “Already taken care of. I’ve rented us an apartment, fully furnished.”
“I thought apartments were for long-term use.”
“I looked into the hotels in Hawthorne, while we were on the plane,” I said. “They’re… adequate. At best. As it turns out, not that many people want to plan a vacation to a town best known for the effects of its resident Faerie portal. If I’m going to spend the next few days as your prisoner, I plan to do it in comfort.” I gestured toward a bench, the first wooden one we had passed. “Let’s sit for a minute. I’ll hire us a driver.”
Vicantha shook her head, then winced at the movement. “No. We need to get out of this building.” Her eyes darted toward the metal frames of the signs hanging above us, the grate in front of a closed store, the steps of the escalator we were headed straight toward. Her nails dug harder into my wrist. “It’s too much. We have to get out.”
We stopped just in front of the escalator. I looked around for another sign marked EXIT, one that didn’t lead down those steps. Next to me, I saw Vicantha doing the same. Neither of us saw anything.
Vicantha took a deep breath, and yanked me forward, onto the moving metal stairway.
The crowd pressed past us as people tried to shave an extra few minutes off the walk. I tried to join them, but couldn’t get past the family with two strollers blocking our way. Someone crashed into me from behind, and the breath rushed out of my lungs as I slammed against the handrail. The strip of metal below the rubber rail brushed my arm, and I drew back a sharp hiss as if I had touched a burning coal.
At the same moment, Vicantha drew in a strangled gasp. She went rigid. Her nails dug even deeper as her breathing paused with a choking jerk.
The person who had bumped into me shoved something into my hand. Then he—or she, I couldn’t see well enough to say—took off at a run through the crowd, collecting shouts of outrage from jostled travelers on the way.
My fingers felt sticky and wet. I raised my hand—and quickly dropped it again. I pressed it up against the railing, metal and all, to hide the unwanted gift as well as possible.
I was holding a bloody knife. And the blood was fae blue.
But I hadn’t been quick enough—not for Vicantha, anyway. With a movement quicker than I could follow, she snatched it away. “What… did you… do?”
Her voice sounded weaker than it had on the plane. That wasn’t right. Even considering the escalator underneath her feet, she shouldn’t have been feeling worse than she had when she had been entirely enclosed in metal.
Then I looked down, and saw the spreading circle of wetness creeping across the side of her black shirt. And the dark blue drips on the escalator steps.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what had just happened. Someone had stabbed Vicantha, and placed the knife in my hand before running away. Whoever it had been, they wanted her dead, and me blamed for it.
And unless I had encountered my own run of monumental bad luck before so much as setting foot in Hawthorne, I was guessing it had to do with the reason someone had decided to frame me for the disappearance of five Winter Court agents.
I quickly considered making a run for it while Vicantha was slowed down by her wound, and just as quickly dismissed the idea, for the same reasons I had decided not to try to lose her in the crowd. Besides, I wasn’t sure I could have if I had tried. Her fingers only dug deeper as she dragged me at lightning speed down the escalator, no longer concerned with propriety or avoiding notice. We amassed our own small collection of yells, but they quickly disappeared behind us as Vicantha and I hurried down the next corridor.
“You know you’ll die if you break your promise,” said Vicantha. With a labored breath, she stumbled, clutching her free hand to her side. “Is keeping me from finding the missing agents worth your life? I should have known better than to entertain the possibility that you were telling the truth about not being involved.” She lifted her hand from her wound to raise the knife, as if she was considering driving it through my heart.
I tried to pull away, but couldn’t. “Keep it down,” I said, with a glance around us to make sure airport security wasn’t anywhere nearby. “And don’t wave that around.” Ahead of us, I spotted a sign for a family bathroom. I dragged her inside and locked the door.
As soon as the lock clicked shut, Vicantha spun and slammed me against the tile wall. The edge of the knife tickled the skin of my throat. “What game are you playing?” she demanded. “Why bring me all the way here only to kill me? Did you want to see me suffer on the airplane? Was it amusing to you?”
My gaze rested on the weapon—then traveled past it. “Your hand.”
Vicantha looked down at her hands, then scowled, like I had tricked her into something. “What about it?”
“No blisters,” I said. And the metal against my throat was causing me no pain. “There’s no iron in that weapon.”
Vicantha studied her hand again, slowly and carefully this time. Without dropping the blade from my throat, she pulled up her shirt and examined the wound. Even with so much iron in the building all around us, it was already closed up and well on its way to disappearing.
“Explain yourself,” she ordered. “Why stab me with a knife you knew wouldn’t kill me? You didn’t even try to incapacitate me by going for a vital organ.”
“You tell me.” I tried not to think about the fact that the weapon in question was now at my own throat, and she was showing no sign of lowering it. “Why would I do that? For that matter, how did I get it through security? Even if I had enough control over my magic to create that kind of illusion, I’m still wearing my watch. I’m sure you can sense the iron in the watch well enough to know it’s no illusion.”
Vicantha frowned at the knife, but still didn’t lower it.
“Someone wants you to believe I’m responsible for those disappearances,” I said. “They bought those plane tickets in my name. They rented the apartment. And a minute ago, they stabbed you and shoved this weapon into my hands.”
For a long moment, Vicantha held herself perfectly still, the blade still pressed against my throat. “A plausible theory,” she finally said—somewhat reluctantly, I thought.
“Someone stumbled into me a second before the attack,” I said. “I didn’t get a look at them—they were gone too fast. But from the lack of iron in the weapon, I would guess fae.” My mind worked as I spoke. “It would have made more sense to use an iron weapon, and make the wound shallow enough that you probably wouldn’t die of iron poisoning. That would make it look like a much more believable assassination attempt. If they used a non-iron weapon, it was because they had no choice.”
Vicantha shook her head. “There are no other fae in this world. There haven’t been for two hundred years.”
“Except for you,” I pointed out. “And the five who went missing.”
Vicantha scowled at the floor. “If they’re responsible for the disappearances, why not simply kill me? They can clearly get to me easily enough. Why go to the trouble of framing you instead?”
“Maybe because you’re too important to kill. If you die, they draw Mab’s attention. They don’t want that. What they want is for you to kill me, assume you’ve solved the problem, and go back to Faerie, leaving them to keep on doing… whatever it is they’re doing.”
Abruptly, Vicantha lowered the knife and stepped back. She reached for the doorknob, but drew back in pain the second her fingertips brushed it.
“Not so fast.” I plucked the knife from her hands. “Wash your hands first. You can’t go out there like that. It would attract attention.”
Vicantha held her breath and grasped the doorknob. She left glistening blue fingerprints across the metal as she yanked the door open. “You think I care about the human authorities? If your theory is correct, whoever is responsible is out there right now.”
I slammed the door shut before she could step outside. It creaked and rattled on its hinges. “They’re long gone by now. Lost in the crowd.”
“Are you suggesting we let them go?”
“I’m saying we should get to Hawthorne and look into these missing fae,” I said. “However difficult it might be to find them, it will be easier than combing through that crowd for someone who will be doing their best not to be found.” I gave a thin smile. “Besides, if they want to frame me this badly, they may come to us again before too long anyway. Let’s be ready for them when they do.”
