Brightly (Flicker #2) (30 page)

“It helps that our friends aren’t exactly Guild material,” Clementine added. “But they know a thing or two. And then there are the rebellious young Guild members who think it’s cool to hang out with
low company
—werecreatures, half-breeds, Sightless humans with a touch of magic.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re pretentious as hell, but they love to gripe about their jobs to anyone who’ll listen.”

“That’s all well and good,” Alice said. “But it doesn’t sound like anyone you know could help us get what we need—and we can’t just walk into a shop and start asking around.”

“Not without coming across as really suspicious,” Henry said. “I doubt many people ask for those kinds of references. It would stick out. I wouldn’t even want to ask someone we know to poke around for us. They’d have too many questions.”

Davis glanced between Henry and Clementine. “Matt still lives in Seattle, right?”

“Yeah, last I heard.” Clementine sat up straighter. “Do you think he’d do it, though?”

“If Henry asked, he might,” said Davis.

Henry shook his head. “There’s no way he’d do something like that for us.”

“Not for us,” said Clementine. “For
you
.”

“We haven’t spoken in months,” Henry protested. “And the last time we did talk, it was… messy. I think I threw something at him.”

Davis raised his eyebrows. “You
think
?”

“Okay, fine, I definitely threw something at him.” Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re not
anything
anymore. We haven’t been for a long time. I doubt he’d want to see me.”

“You could ask, though.” Clementine leaned forward, her hair falling across her shoulder. “Look, I don’t want to deal with him any more than you do—”

“I seriously doubt that,” Henry said.

“
But
, no matter what happened, that’s our only connection. You have to ask him.”

“It’s not that simple. I don’t think you realize the can of worms we’d be opening by telling him about any of this.”

“He’s nothing we can’t handle.”

Henry sighed. “You don’t know him like I do.”

“Well, maybe if you ever listened to me, you wouldn’t know him at all,” she said. “Look, Henry, you were more than willing to take on a sea serpent yesterday. Matt’s not nearly as scary as that.”

“I think a sea serpent might be easier to control,” Henry said darkly.

“Now you’re just being stupid,” Clementine bemoaned.

“Clem,” Davis said, shooting her a sharp look.

She ignored him. “Don’t wuss out on us, Henry. Are you really so scared to talk to him?”

For a moment, Henry just stared at her in silence. Then he rose from his chair, crossed the living room and walked out the front door, letting the screen door crash behind him.

“I wish you hadn’t pushed him like that,” Davis fretted. He stood by the kitchen sink, looking through the window. Night had fallen. The trees were shrouded in shadows. “He’s not going to do it.”

Lee, Jason and Clementine sat at the table, picking at leftover vegetarian spaghetti from two nights ago. Filo had wandered out of the house about an hour after Henry left; Nasser and Alice had disappeared.

“He’ll get over it,” Clementine said. “He’s probably just nervous to ask a favor after what happened with Matt. I guess I get it. I mean, would you feel great about asking Philippa for something like that?”

“Well, Philippa and I were on good terms when we broke up,” Davis said. “Also, none of us ever got knocked out cold by some guy she picked a fight with in a bar, which makes things a little less awkward.”

“Fair point,” Clementine said.

“Who’s Matt, anyway?” Lee asked.

Clementine wrinkled her nose. “Henry’s ex-boyfriend. I was looking forward to never speaking his name again, but he’s got Guild connections, and no matter what Henry wants to think, Matt’s still got a thing for him. Matt sometimes has… a hard time letting things go.”

“What kinds of connections?” Jason asked.

“His dad’s in the Guild,” Davis said. “Some important Seer. He had an affair with a faerie woman—thus, Matt. Most Guild members would never bring their half-breed children back to the Guildhall, but he did.”

Lee frowned. “Is that illegal or something?”

“More like taboo. Apparently, if you cheat on your spouse and have a half-breed kid, the polite thing to do is pretend nothing ever happened, not bring the kid back to live with you. But like I said, Matt’s dad is some kind of big-shot, so he just did what he wanted to do.”

“Remember what I said about rebellious young Guild members?” Clementine said. “Case in point: Matt Flanagan. He’ll do anything to piss off his dad, or pretty much anyone else. It’s fun for him. I don’t know if that’s his fey side, or if he’s just got terrible impulse control.”

Jason leaned his elbows on the table. “So who got knocked out in the bar fight?”

Clementine gave a disgusted scoff; Davis just shook his head wearily. “Henry did,” he said. “Last year. We were in Seattle for the weekend, staying with some friends.”

“Anna used to let us do that,” Clementine explained. “She liked us to get off the island now and then, as long as we promised to stick together and be responsible, all that. And we
did
try to be responsible. Mostly. Sometimes.”

At her words, Davis smiled. “We were at this bar with a bunch of people, and Matt got into it with some huge goblin guy. I don’t even know what they were arguing about.”

“Matt threw a fiery drink on him,” Clementine said. “Seriously. It was on fire. One little burst of magic and he was throwing a glass of burning alcohol in the guy’s face.”

“It didn’t hurt him,” Davis added quickly. “Goblins have really thick skin, literally. They’re not flammable. But after that, they were in each other’s faces. Henry tried to break it up and—
bam
.” Davis grimly pantomimed the punch. “Uppercut to the jaw. All of a sudden, Henry was on the floor, everyone was shoving, there was booze everywhere. It was a complete mess. And then…” He grimaced.

Clementine picked up the story. “I thought that bastard snapped Henry’s neck. I lost it. I wanted to rip that goblin’s face off. For the record, he wasn’t so tough when he was trying to hit someone who was actually ready to fight with him.”

Sighing, Davis said, “Once we pulled her off the goblin, she tried to rip
Matt’s
face off.”

“He deserved it,” she grumbled. “I wish you hadn’t stopped me.”

“Needless to say,” Davis concluded, “we got kicked out of the bar and we haven’t been back since—which is a shame, because they have really great hot wings there.”

“Let me get this straight,” Jason said slowly. “This guy, Matt, happens to be the kind of person who occasionally sets people on fire in bars.”

“Right,” Clementine said.

“He also used to date Henry—and by all accounts, it was a messy breakup that involved throwing things.”

She cringed a little. “Also right.”

“And we’re counting on his charitable assistance.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Oh, wow.” Jason slumped down in his chair. “We’re screwed.”

Filo had only been to this place once, days ago, but he remembered how to find it. The tree house wasn’t very far from Brightly; he remembered the route Henry had taken when he’d shown Filo the first time. After a ten-minute walk through the woods, he was standing in its shadow.

It was a simple tree house, but sturdy and well-built. Henry said that it had been in this tree for almost twenty years. The glass on the little windows was cloudy, but they kept out the wind, rain and snow.

The ladder was nestled against the tree trunk, reaching up to a hole in the floor of the tree house that served as the door. Filo climbed the ladder until he could poke his head through the door and look into the tree house.

It was more spacious than it looked from the ground. Some sleeping bags and blankets were folded up and placed in one corner. Three shelves lined one wall, covered in odds and ends: a jar filled with dark sand; a pile of seashells; a deck of playing cards; a stack of books; a couple of lanterns and a box of matches.

Henry sat against the wall beside a window, studying a stack of photos. Next to him was a small wooden chest. The first time Filo visited, the chest was locked. It was open now.

“Hey,” Filo said tentatively.

At the sound of his voice, Henry looked up. “Hey.”

“Davis and Clementine were wondering where you went.”

“But you’re the one who came looking.”

“Yeah.”

Henry looked at Filo a moment longer than he needed to. “How’d you know where I would be?”

“I didn’t. The other day, you said you come here to think because it’s quiet, and I just thought you might…” He shook his head and climbed the rest of the way into the tree house. “Why’d you take off, anyway?”

Henry exhaled through his nose. “To send a letter.”

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

“No, but I need to. Clem’s right. I’ve got an in with a Guild member that we really need. Acting like I don’t would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. So I sent it.”

“How? You can’t have used an animation charm to send your message,” Filo said. “Not with all this water. It would erode the spell.”

“I just stuck it in a bottle and gave it to one of the selkies to deliver. Once the other merfolk were gone, it was easy to call one of them,” he said. “I paid her a little something to get it there tonight and bring back the reply in the morning, if there is one.”

“A message in a bottle?” Filo raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“I’m a fan of the classics,” Henry said with a shrug.

Filo smiled faintly. “And what’re you doing out here?”

“Nothing. I just…” He half-raised the stack of photos, looking sheepish. “When my mom told me what happened, she gave me these. It’s a bunch of old pictures of my parents and her. I keep them out here. I felt like seeing them. That’s all.”

“Oh.”

Henry’s gaze flickered back to the photos. “Before yesterday, I’d only ever seen my parents in these pictures.”

“It’s good that you have them,” Filo said quietly. “It must be kind of nice, knowing what they look like.”

When he was much younger, Filo had sometimes looked in the mirror and tried to envision where his features had come from. He would stare at himself until his own face looked alien to him, and then he would turn away, feeling like he had come from nowhere, like he could not have existed before the first morning he woke up in that apartment.

“It is and it isn’t,” Henry said. “Sometimes I think it would be easier not to know anything about them at all.”

Filo shrugged. “It is. And it isn’t.”

Henry set the photos inside the wooden chest and shut the lid. “When you left the house, did you say where you were going?”

“No.”

“Good. That means we have a while before anyone misses us.”

“We?” Filo echoed.

“Yeah. Unless you don’t want to go.”

“Go where?”

Henry smiled. “I want to show you something.”

Nasser followed Alice into the upstairs bathroom. She shut the door behind him and leaned against it, pressing her back to the wood. Under the florescent light, she looked pale, but her hazel eyes were incredibly bright. She’d clenched her hands into tight fists. All around her, Nasser could feel her energy leaping with fear.

In a low voice, Nasser asked, “What haven’t you told me?”

A minute ago, Alice had accidentally bumped into Nasser as they walked toward the kitchen. The moment they touched, a cold shock blasted through him. Nasser felt like he’d been punched in the chest. Without thinking about it, he’d grabbed Alice by the shoulders and spun her to face him. Cold energy prickled under his hands, even through the fabric of her shirt.

Alice had looked up into his face, her eyes wide, and in that moment, she seemed to realize that he knew, that there was no hiding it, not from him.

“Not here,” she’d whispered. “Upstairs.”

Now they stood facing each other in the bathroom. Nasser felt cold all over.

Alice took a breath. “I’ve been having these dreams. Floods. Water rising and rising until it’s over my head. Always water. I can never tell it’s not real until the moment I wake up.”

“When did this start?”

“The first night we spent here. I don’t have the dreams every night… mostly only when the merfolk are singing. And the other night, Lee caught me sleepwalking.” Alice shook her head. “Even when I’m awake, I feel like I’m suffocating. Sometimes the dreams scare the hell out of me, but sometimes they’re beautiful. Sometimes I
like
them, and I
can’t
because I know what they’re trying to do to me.”

“What are you saying?” Nasser could feel his insides starting to shake, a sick feeling—because he already knew but he needed her to say it aloud and make it real, because he was angry, because he was terrified.