Brightly (Flicker #2) (29 page)

Soon they were all trundling into the dim, silent lobby of the motel. The clock hanging on the wall said it was nearly one o’clock in the morning.

Nasser had given his jacket to Henry to cover his torn, bloodstained shirt, but in the yellow light of the lobby, he was still obviously in bad shape. Not that the rest of them looked much better: streaked with mud, dressed in wrinkled, damp clothes that smelled like salt water.

The woman at the front desk didn’t seem to mind. Maybe it was just the time of night, but her interest in them seemed very limited. Once they’d paid for three rooms with double beds and she’d handed over the room keys, it was as if they disappeared from her consciousness.

When they located the rooms, Lee discovered that two of them were side-by-side, and the third was directly across the hall.

“These rooms have showers, right?” Clementine asked as she unlocked the room she was sharing with Henry and Davis. “I need to scrub off the top layer of my skin.”

Nasser watched Clementine step into the room, followed by Henry, who still held himself like he was in pain. Nasser’s brow was knit slightly, like he was mulling something over.

Davis clapped Nasser on the shoulder. “I’ll take a look at him. Make sure everything’s cleaned and bandaged before I let him go to sleep. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” Davis said. “Goodnight.”

Nasser glanced at Lee. “Can I talk to you for a second? Privately?”

“Of course,” she said.

She followed him around the corner and down a long hallway lined with closed doors. When they stopped in a little alcove beside an ice machine, Nasser cupped her elbow and turned her so she stood between him and the wall. His eyes were dark and focused.

“What’s going on?” She reached up to touch his arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “After everything that happened today, I just wanted…”

“What?” she asked, and in answer, he bent his head and kissed her with his mouth open.

Before she knew it, she had stumbled back against the wall and pulled him along with her by his belt loops. His long body was pressed against hers, his hands moving through her hair, and she stood up on her toes, desperate to get closer to him. When she breathed him in, he smelled like musk and boy and magic.

“You are the craziest—bravest—toughest—person I have ever met,” he said, between kisses. “I am so in love with you right now.”

She laughed, breathless and giddy. She’d never done this before, never kissed someone in a motel hallway in the middle of the night. A stranger could emerge from any of these rooms at any moment. Weary as she’d been, she was wide awake now, her blood singing. “You’re overtired and delirious,” she whispered dizzily.

“No.” He pulled back and looked her in the eye. His hands were pressed against the wall on either side of her. “You were incredible today. You got us out of there. It was all you. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be with you.”

“Near-death experiences,” she said. “They make people say crazy things.”

He shook his head. “Near-
you
experience. You always make me crazy.”

She pushed lightly against his chest, but she was laughing. “Do you have to try to be this perfect? Is it hard work?”

“I can stop, if you want me to.”

Looping one arm around his waist, she drew him back down to her. When she spoke, her lips barely brushed his. “Well, I wouldn’t go
that
far…”

It was a few minutes before Lee reluctantly disentangled herself from him.

“I should get back to the room,” she murmured, her mouth tingling. “Alice is probably already in bed. I don’t want to wake her up when I come in.”

“You won’t,” Nasser said. “She wanted to bunk with Filo and Jason. Which leaves me across the hall, without a roommate.”

“Oh,” she said, then paused and looked up at him. “Oh!”

He flashed her a lopsided grin and she kissed him, impulsively, while he was still smiling.

Chapter Fifteen:

When Clementine cut her hand with the brass mermaid knife and let her blood fall into the sea, sunlight had turned the waters of Nemo Cove to a shining sheet of glass, so bright that looking at it almost hurt Lee’s eyes. The morning had dawned clear and hot, all the mist and rain burned away by the sun.

“I don’t want to wait until nightfall,” Clementine had said earlier, when they disembarked from
Eudora
. “They might not like coming out during the day, but they’ll come for blood. They’ll always come for blood.”

The merfolk did. One by one, their faces rose from the depths of the cove, their skin slick and shiny in the afternoon light. Filo didn’t stand at the end of the dock to speak with them. He hung back a few paces, out of easy reach, spilling liquid words. He and one of the merfolk, a large male with dark blue skin and cutting eyes, spoke back and forth for several minutes.

“They want to see the token,” Filo said in English, looking to Henry.

Henry pulled the seashell from his pocket and walked to the end of the dock. His gaze swept over the merfolk, catching on the mermaid who had accepted his blood.

Kneeling, Henry held out the shell. One of the merfolk reached up with a pale, webbed hand and took it. Several others swam closer, crowding around the merman who held the shell, speaking together in low, watery voices.

“They can tell it’s hers,” Filo translated. “The shell must be enchanted. They know what she means by sending it. They know it’s a signal to come home.”

“Are they going back, then?” Clementine asked.

Filo listened. “They got the Maiden’s message loud and clear. There’s no reason to stay when they can go home, so that’s what they’re going to do. They say they’re going now.”

For once, the tension seemed to leave Clementine’s shoulders. “Are you sure?”

“Faeries can’t lie,” Filo said. “They’re telling the truth.”

“What about the curse?” Davis asked. “If they leave, what’ll happen to the people who are affected?”

Filo translated the question. One of the mermaids answered.

“The curse won’t fade on its own,” he said, translating simultaneously with her speech. “It uses the host’s energy to increase its power. It builds its own momentum, keeps itself going until it’s run its course.”

Davis looked grim. “So there’s only one way to break it.”

“That’s how it sounds,” Filo said.

The merfolk started to slip back under the surface. The last one to disappear was the male that clutched the Maiden’s shell in his hand. When he sank, nothing was left of him or any of the merfolk to show that they had been here. There was only the light on the water.

They gathered in the living room at sunset. Part of Lee kept waiting for merfolk song to float up from the water, not quite willing to trust that they were really gone. But time ticked by, and the singing never began.

“What we need is information,” Davis said. “I’m sure there are books about cutting through to the world-borders into Otherworld and about the caves, but we don’t have them. We could probably find books like that in Seattle, but it wouldn’t be easy.”

“It can’t be that hard to track down the supernatural shops,” Nasser said.

“Not at all,” Henry said. “But the shops are all monitored by the Guild. There’s a Guildhall in Seattle. It’s the biggest in the Northwest.”

Lee knew only a little about the Guild. According to Nasser, it was an organization of humans that acted as a sort of magical law enforcement body. When the supernatural and the mundane came together, they clashed, often violently. Because of that, the Guild worked to conceal the supernatural world from the normal world, while also attempting to solve the inevitable conflicts that did crop up.

Apparently, the Guild had strict laws regarding magic, and followed them to the letter. Filo was convinced that, if they were ever discovered by the Guild, their eyes would be ripped out as punishment for practicing magic illegally. From what Lee understood, the Guild acted both as a bridge between the worlds, connecting them across a treacherous divide, and as sentinels that guarded each end, monitoring what passed back and forth.

“What’s a Guildhall?” Lee asked.

“It’s their base,” Clementine explained. “It’s not just one big hall, though. There are connected buildings and some underground levels. It has workshops, libraries, meeting halls, kitchens, mess halls—everything they might need. I heard the living quarters are an old hotel that the Guild bought. They keep everything glamoured, so normals don’t really notice it.”

“You said they monitor all the shops,” Filo said. “How do they keep track of things?”

“Every magical practitioner in the city has to be registered with the Guild,” Henry said. “Businesses have to supply inventory lists, submit to random searches for illegal goods, the works. Basically, the Guild regulates the magic trade. They don’t want anyone selling magic who doesn’t answer to them.”

Clementine nodded. “You’re supposed to carry your papers at all times, to prove you’re in good standing with the Guild.”

“How do they define ‘practitioner?’” Alice asked.

“Basically, any human who can actively harness and control their magic,” Davis said. “Sighted, Sightless, it doesn’t matter. If you know what you’ve got and you can use it, you’re considered a practitioner and you need to get in touch with the Guild to be registered.”

Jason grimaced. “So if we ran into someone from the Guild, we’d all be screwed.”

“Pretty much,” Davis said. “If it makes you feel better, we’re running an illegal outfit, too, so we’d be just as screwed as you.”

“Why aren’t you all in the Guild?” Alice asked. “Shouldn’t the Brightlys have fallen in with them, like, a hundred years ago?”

Henry laughed humorlessly. “A hundred years ago, the Brightlys were scattering to the winds. The Guild was in the middle of a big crackdown, and the folks in charge didn’t like how the Brightlys ran things on this island.”

“How come?” Lee asked.

“Well, the Guild’s all about secrecy, right? Keeping peace between the worlds by keeping them separate. They thought the Brightlys were too open, too reckless. Their reputation was too big. Even normals had heard rumors about the family of ‘witches’ in the San Juans. So when the time came, the Brightlys were refused acceptance by the Guild and branded as illegal practitioners. Nobody wanted anything to do with the Brightlys anymore. Some moved far away and changed their names. The ones that stayed had to publicly step out of the magic trade. If they kept working, it was in secret. Really, the Guild never wanted us. They like their own kind best, the people who are brought up in their society, not people like us.”

Leaning back in her chair, Lee asked, “But why do they have all this authority? Registration, random searches—why would anyone agree to do all that?”

“Protection, mostly,” Clementine shrugged. “The Guild is a law enforcement body. If you ever run into trouble with someone else in the magical community, you want to be able to turn to the Guild, the same way you’d turn to the cops. Fey, werecreatures, vampires—they all want the Guild on their side if they need them. And the only way to be protected by their laws is to follow them. You see?”

“There’s also a certain element of fear,” Davis added. “The Guild is filled with powerful practitioners. Some of their masters are as powerful as lesser faerie lords.”

“That’s not true,” Clementine complained. “Don’t spread rumors.”

“It’s not just a rumor,” Davis said. “Even one of their journeymen could trounce all of us at once and you know it. Is it such a stretch?”

Clementine rolled her eyes. “Just because Philippa said it doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Davis reddened slightly. He opened his mouth, but Henry leaned forward.

“Look,” Henry said. “Everyone’s heard that, and a hundred other rumors about what the Guild can do. It doesn’t matter if it’s
true
. What matters is that people
believe
it’s true and behave accordingly.”

“And like it or not,” said Davis, “their regulations really do make things safer for everyone. You almost never hear about curses or vampire attacks or anything like that in Seattle, because the Guild’s got it locked down. What the Guild does works, and people respect that.”

“If you guys are illegal like us, how do you know all this?” Jason asked.

Davis shrugged. “If you’re not trying to sell magic or buy seedy stuff, and you keep your head down, moving around in Seattle’s magical circles isn’t too hard. Nobody’s looking for people like us. They have bigger fish to fry. Besides, we never stay longer than a weekend and we say we’re from Friday Harbor. Since Brightly has been defunct for decades, as far as anyone knows, there’s no connection there.”

“In Seattle, we’re just some humans with a little bit of magic and really weak Sight,” Henry said. “Not a threat to anyone. Hardly even interesting, since Seattle’s crawling with people like that.”