All That Glows (8 page)

“Too proud to share, Your Majesty?” Edmund is all sneer in the pub’s dim lights. He takes ahold of the Banshee’s hand and pulls her down to him. “Take a seat, doll.”

I keep my attention focused entirely on the Banshee. She’s hungry but not starving: average strength. As long as it’s just her, I think I can manage. “Back off, Bean-shìdh.”

The soul feeder assesses me as well, picking apart my strengths and weaknesses as I sit in the chair, gripping the arm of a tipsy monarch. His muscles are all hardness under my fingers, sculpted by adrenaline and fear.

The Banshee is right. I don’t have a responsibility to protect Edmund. The oath I swore under Queen Mab on the day of the treaty was to guard those with royal blood. I can leave now with Richard and pretend this never happened. The Banshee will slip away with Edmund into some dark corner, take him by the collar, pull him down, get her lips to his ear. Then she’ll scream. Tomorrow Edmund Williams the fifth will be just another listing in the obituaries. Death by alcohol poisoning, his soul mortared and pestled to sate the Banshee’s hunger.

But, no matter how slimy and base he might be, Edmund is still a friend of Richard’s. His life has value. I should try my hardest to save it.

The soul feeder smiles at me, stepping back behind Edmund. Her hand is on his other shoulder now, prepared to fling him forward in case I aim any harmful spell her way.

“I’m serious, Ed,” the prince finds his voice again. “She’s a soul eater. . . . I mean, feeder. Thing!”

The Banshee’s blackened eyes spark with understanding. “He knows? You broke the Frithemaeg taboo?”

Now there’s no question. I have to take care of her.

Edmund is squirming out of her grasp, trying to get a closer look at the creature behind him. It’s in this moment, when she’s busy tightening her fingers into the socialite’s shoulders, that I strike.

Since she’s placed Edmund in front of her as a shield, I have to go up. I lunge to the top of the table in a single movement, ignoring the stress on my humanoid muscles and how much I want to vomit. My mind is bent on magic—only dimly aware of the scattering remains of beer glasses and sloshed whiskey.

My first spell misses, grazing only centimeters above Edmund’s hairline and ending in an explosion of light on the wood paneling behind him. Seeing that her human shield has no effect, the Banshee lets out a long, heart-crushing wail. It’s not a death scream . . . that fatal blow she administers to each of her victims. The empty pints at my feet shatter with the sound, carpeting the table in glass. The magic in her scream fills my eyes with sparks. My ears feel like they’ve been stuffed full of cotton, heavy and useless.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t speak. I braid the spell together with my tongue, sending it out into the bright, speckled dark of my vision. “Átemian!”

The wailing stops and my senses resurrect to their old, keen selves. The mortals are hunched over at my feet, their hands crumpled over their ears in agonized angles. Only Edmund and Richard are looking up, taking in the events with dazed eyes.

The Banshee clutches her throat, trying to coax back the voice I stole.

I leap again, over Edmund’s head and onto my opponent. We fall to the floor; a tangle of turquoise, red, and black. Up this close, her face looks like death—so white and chilled, like a body tucked away in a crypt. I see the knowledge playing out in her eyes. The realization that I’m stronger. That she’s lost.

My hands envelope hers, crush over her larynx. My energies are fading fast, sapped between the tangled electronics of the pub and our fight. I have to choose my next few spells carefully. Her silence is more important than her banishment. And I’ll have to take care of the humans’ memories as well.

“You’ll leave this pub,” I hiss. “You will speak of this to no one.”

Her eyes become little more than black lines. My fingers tighten.

“Cyspe.” The binding spell twists out of me, sliding through her tightly shut lips and dissolving on her tongue. She won’t breathe a word of what she’s seen here. She can’t.

Before I can let go of her throat, the Banshee shrinks into a taut furry thing that slips and slides through my fingers. I crouch, my hands still curled as I watch the weasel slink in and out of the grove of feet. In a flash, she’s gone.

Richard and his friends are recovering, along with the rest of the pub’s stunned patrons. Groans and curses rise behind me like a tidal wave, swelling and growing into full-blown panic. I have to take care of it fast.

“Forgietath.” My magic mists over the pub like rain, snatching memories of the last few minutes into irretrievable nothingness. Only Richard’s head is immune. He needs to remember this, to know the danger he’s in every time he hits the pubs.

I have no more fight left in me. Not with the sickness battering my gut. At least I don’t have to worry about Green Women. They give the Banshees a wide berth, out of mutual dislike. It’s the other Banshees and the Black Dogs I have to worry about. Their voices can reach so many dark places in the night.

I return to the table slowly, trying to reconcile the reeling in my head, my stomach. It wasn’t this bad last time, at the Darkroom. I thought Breena said it would get better. . . . This—the lightning lancing through my gut, tearing blades through my veins—this is agony.

I have to get out of here.

It’s as if Richard already knows. He’s out of his chair, waiting for me. The tabletop is all chaos in front of him, dripping alcohol and broken glass. His friends are taking it in—this loose end I don’t have the energy to fix.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Corkscrew Curls is the first to recover. His hands shake as he reaches out to pick up the largest piece of glass. It’s no bigger than his thumbnail.

The prince looks at his friends, their explicit surprise. The rest of the pub dances on to the same song that was rattling the speakers before the Banshee arrived.

“They don’t know?” he asks as soon as I get close to him.

I shake my head and almost fall into the chair.

Richard reaches out, bracing my shoulders with his hands. The touch steadies me, keeps my head from swirling like a leaf caught in crosswinds. “Are you . . . are you okay?”

I shake my head again. “Too much,” I manage, before the threat of vomiting forces me to close my lips.

He understands. The pub, the drinks, the mortals and their machines. All pressing down on me, threatening to crush.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says.

The tree is the first thing I see when I lurch out of the pub. It sits on the other side of the street, past a barricade of beetle-black cabs and Mini Coopers. From the gnarled lengths of its branches and the way it sits alone, I see it’s quite old. The city has grown around it, the sidewalk and curb parting to give it a rare patch of earth to feed from.

I only get halfway across the road before the sickness gets the better of me. Sparkling water and bile coat the asphalt under my feet. There’s the squeal of brakes and headlamps bright in my face. Someone yells, their anger punctuated by a car horn.

“Lay off it!” I hear the prince yelling, somewhere above me.

An arm loops around my shoulders, lifting and guiding me out of the vehicle’s path. We’re on the sidewalk again, only this time there’s something for me to cling to. The tree’s bark is rugged and rust red: relief under my fingers. I lean into it.

The change is instant. Energy, slow and hearty, pumps into my body. I no longer feel drained, beyond helpless, but I’m still a far cry from what I could be.

Richard stands close, hands shoved into his pockets. The way he looks at me now is different—it’s not fear, but close to it. Reverence maybe.

I close my eyes and breathe. Diesel and dust cling to the air in my nostrils. I focus on the tree, on its roots and the soil far beneath them.

For several minutes, it’s only the distant sounds of music and the cabs pulling in and out of their parking spaces. My breathing grows stronger, steadier. I no longer feel like I’m about to break.

“You just saved Edmund’s life, didn’t you?” the prince says when I open my eyes.

“Yeah,” I cough out the word. “Guess he owes me.”

“What was that thing? A soul feeder?” There’s just an edge of shakiness in his voice.

“A Banshee. They’ll suck out your soul with a scream. Not quite as painful as getting eaten alive by a Green Woman.” I think back to my shoulder and the long-gone bite of fire.

“But—but it turned into a ferret.”

“Weasel. She shifted into a weasel,” I correct him. “They like turning into stoats too. And hares. And hooded crows. Keep an eye out for those.”

Richard looks over his shoulder. Across the street I see his security guards, watching. They haven’t moved from their posts by the pub door. Richard must have asked them to stay.

“Don’t worry, she’s gone.” There’s nothing nearby either. No Black Dogs or fellow Banshees. This one was hunting alone.

The prince looks back at the tree, where my hands touch the bark. “What are you doing?”

“Recharging. The pubs are hard on me. . . . Too much technology, I guess. I was already strained before the Banshee appeared.”

“That’s why you threw up?” Richard glances over at the oily patch in the road. It winks back at us, reflecting the headlamps of a passing cab.

Is it getting worse? I swallow the decay from my mouth. Hard to tell.

“This . . . attack. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, is it?” The prince appears very grounded and clear-eyed as he thinks this out, all drink evaporated from his system.

“There’ve been a few other incidents,” I admit. “It’s hard to avoid them in the pubs.”

“The blackouts I had . . . that was you?” He examines his hand. The swelling is mostly gone now.

“I do what I must to keep you alive.” I push myself away from the tree. “Period.”

Richard looks like he wants to say something, but the words get caught in his throat. There’s a commotion on the other side of the street. Men with cameras moving down the sidewalk. Seems like the paparazzi finally got tipped off on Richard’s whereabouts. That’s the last thing I need: my photo gracing the front page of
The Sun
for every Fae to see.

The prince sees them too. “Great,” he mutters, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets.

“I think it’s time to go home,” I tell him.

“I think you’re right,” he says, and waves across the street to his bodyguards. “Enough for one night.”

My legs are still shaky, ready to collapse. I reach up toward a tree branch, tangle my fingers into its leaves. A few of them break off into my palm—a piece of nature to take with me into the car that’s now wheeling around, ready for Richard’s quick escape from the paparazzi.

The night feels full of eyes as Richard opens the car door for me. Tonight was too close. If there’d been even one more soul feeder on the prowl, I would have failed. Richard would be dead.

And I don’t even have the choice of backup. Not if I want to keep walking this thin line, this only path.

The leaves fold over and over in my palm, my only comfort as Richard comes in on the other side and shuts the door. The car pulls away, back toward the curling iron gates of Kensington.

Your presence is requested at Queen Mab’s court.

You must leave immediately.

P
aleness invades my face as I stare at the words I just unrolled from the sparrow’s leg. The messenger appeared in the last minutes of my shift with Richard, forcing me to rush out of Kensington with little more than a hasty good-bye.

Being called back to the Highlands this early in my detail could mean only two things. There could be a briefing about the ravens. Or it could mean that she knows.

A sickness beyond the machines stirs in my gut. I’d known the risk of staying and showing myself to Richard, but I’d gone through with it anyway. I’d clung to the glimpsing hope I could get away with it.

“What have I done?” The brittle paper collapses to dust in my hand.

The bird’s head turns sideways. A dull, black eye blinks at me twice before it swoops down to the gravel drive and starts picking for food.

When Mab summons, I have to go. I’m bound by the oath I gave her so long ago, after she found me roaming the Highlands in all my newborn wildness and gave me a choice. A choice to follow her, to hone my power and contain it, or to continue, raw and aimless, over the moors.

Because I chose her, chose tiers of nobility and order, I now have to face the consequences of what I’ve done. The rule I’ve broken.

There’s still a chance the queen doesn’t know. This request for my presence might have nothing to do with the veiling spell. Helene acted perfectly normal when I handed the prince off to her just a few moments before. But this prospect, a meeting about the prophecy, isn’t much better. The raven’s words spoke of something monumental, something that could change us all.

I swallow my fear and close my eyes, concentrating on that very essential part of me—magic. It seems that I have enough energy to carry me out of the city, which is all I need. Once I’m back in the realms of true nature, the magic will take care of itself.

I take to the skies. London becomes little more than a strange sequence of slanting roofs cut through with a snaking river. I weave in and out of the wispy cirrus clouds, fast and graceful. The city falls behind; the ground below becomes a patchwork of green, yellow, and brown farmland, bordered with hedges and fences.

Minutes become hours and the land grows wilder. Rolling hills with dustings of snow and black-watered lochs replace the towns and their tamed pockets of earth. There’s something in this raw wilderness, tangible and pure, that lifts me up, tugs me to greater heights. I feel as though I could keep flying for years.

Here, in this tangle of mountains and narrow lakes, Mab holds her court. I manage an unpracticed landing on the highest peak, half tumbling through remains of snow, now melting with the summer’s creeping heat. The mountaintop appears empty, but I know better. I stare at the sheer rock face only a few feet away. To the lone, mortal climber, it seems like many of the other mountainsides in the area. Only a Fae can sense otherwise.