Brightly (Flicker #2) (34 page)

He started walking, leading them down the passage. When they turned a corner, it opened into a wider tunnel, more similar to the ones they’d passed through with the group.

“You can take those bracelets off now,” Matt said, glancing over his shoulder. In the orb’s light, his features looked sharper and stranger, less human than they looked in daylight.

One by one, they each pulled off the bracelets and pressed them into Matt’s waiting hand. The chill receded, though Lee had to shake her hands to banish the tingling cold. “Why didn’t they see us back there?”

“They could see us just fine,” Matt replied. “They just didn’t notice. They forgot about us. It’s a very simple glamour.”

Simple for you, maybe,
Lee thought. Illusions and tricks of the mind seemed to be second-nature to faeries—and, apparently, part-faeries as well—but Lee had never been much good at weaving illusions. Filo said it was because her heart wasn’t in it.
When you glamour someone, you have to mean it,
he’d told her.
You have to want to trick them.

Their footfalls sounded very loud in the silence of the passageways, their shoes disturbing layers of dust and dirt. The orb’s light threw their shadows against the dusty brick wall to their right, huge and leaping. To their left, empty wooden frames divided the tunnel in half, a reminder that this place had once been at street level before the city was rebuilt on top of it.

“You said the Guild operated out of this place, right?” Henry asked, ducking under an exposed pipe.

“Yes,” Matt said. “But they didn’t leave it a mess like this, if that’s what you’re asking. They made improvements—restoring, remodeling, so the place would suit them better. They even dug out a few new passages.”

“What kinds of improvements?”

“See for yourself,” Matt said, as they rounded another corner. The orb floated ahead of them, throwing light in all directions, and that was when they saw it.

The buried city.

Chapter Seventeen:

They stood, not in a decaying corridor, but on a century-old street that stretched into the darkness. At the edge of the light’s reach, Lee could see the shapes of brick archways and simple storefronts to the left of the sidewalk. On the right side was the retaining wall Matt had described. The roof was high enough that she couldn’t see it in the darkness above.

Everything was covered in a layer of dust, even the sidewalk, but beneath that, it was clear that the brick buildings were remarkably well-preserved. Lee felt like she had stepped into a weird, alternate-reality version of old photos of Seattle she’d seen.

She had expected ruins like the ones they had passed through, but there were no ruins here. This was a piece of a city that had been forgotten, then reclaimed, then sealed away and abandoned again. This was a city holding its breath. In its shadows, any number of things could be sleeping.

“Here we are,” Matt said. “Just as promised.”

“How much is there?” Lee asked softly. She was almost afraid to speak at a normal volume. The air was unnervingly still.

“Twelve or thirteen blocks,” he replied. “All of it put back together after this place was condemned and left to rot. They held their meetings here, had workshops, taught lessons.”

She shook her head. “This is amazing. I can’t believe they only use it for storage.”

“Consider yourself lucky that they do. If the Underground were still in regular use, I wouldn’t be able to bring you down here. Hardly anyone comes to this place anymore, unless they’re looking for something very specific.”

Glancing at Matt, Henry asked, “What did those records say, again?”

Matt reached into his messenger bag and withdrew two scraps of paper and a pen. “The records for what’s kept down here aren’t great. The notes on exactly where items are stored are incomplete. But I’ve narrowed it down to a few locations.” He wrote something down and passed one of the papers to Henry. “Here. Titles and addresses.”

Henry skimmed the paper. “Street addresses. Right.”

“I didn’t bring a map, I’m afraid,” Matt said. “But the place isn’t that big. It can’t be too hard to get around down here.”

Lee took off her backpack and pulled out her flashlight. Before she could light it, she heard Matt scoff.

“Don’t be common,” he said, withdrawing a second glass orb from his bag. “Catch.”

She did. The orb was surprisingly light, as if it were hollow. “What is it?”

“Imitation will-o-the-wisp. It’s a Guild design. I doubt you can break it, but don’t lose it.”

“Are they hard to come by?” Lee asked.

“For half-breeds, yes. Guild folk don’t teach us magic at all, if they can help it, much less give us their pretty tools.”

“Why not?”

“They fear us,” Matt said, smiling. “And why wouldn’t they? Half-breeds are the lowest creatures, but in the offspring of Sighted humans and fey, the blood is strong. The raw power of a Guild practitioner, the inborn magical talent of the fey, and no restraint to govern any of it. Now.” He pointed to the orb in her hands. “Just light it and it’ll follow you.”

When Lee channeled some of her magical energy into the orb, it began to glow with green-white light, illuminating several feet in each direction. The glass orb lifted from her hands like a balloon, bobbing in the air before her. She was impressed despite herself.

“We should probably split up,” Henry said. “It’ll go faster that way.”

“Lee,” Filo said, glancing at her. “You want to go with Henry?”

She opened her mouth, but it was a moment before she said anything. She noticed the way Matt’s eyes darted to Filo the moment he said it, the way Henry jammed his hands into his pockets and looked like he would rather be anywhere else.

“That sounds fine.” When she looked to Henry, he nodded once.

“Looks like it’s you and me, then,” Matt said to Filo, tilting his head. “Shall we?”

“Are you going to be surly or conversational?” Matt asked, in a tone that was more surly than conversational. “I’d rather know upfront.”

Instead of answering, Filo just ripped the brittle tape off another box and peered inside. This one was filled with dented metal beaks. They looked like masks. Filo sighed and moved on to the next box.

The address on Matt’s list had been a shop once, but Filo couldn’t guess what kind. Everything inside had been cleared out and replaced with junk the Guild didn’t need. Crates and old cardboard boxes were stacked three or four deep, each one crammed with books, yellowed files or discarded equipment. Maneuvering through the room was tricky. Based on the dust, nobody had touched any of this stuff for years.

It was Filo’s fault that he was here with Matt. When Henry suggested they split up, Filo had experienced a brief fit of madness and almost proposed that the two of them go together. The thought of being alone with Henry was as thrilling as it was terrifying—but he’d asked Lee to come along so he could avoid just such a situation.

He could’ve gone with Lee. That would’ve been more pleasant. But ever since they stepped into that shop, Matt had been looking at Henry like he was something to eat, and that chafed Filo in a way he couldn’t quite explain. He didn’t want Henry to be stuck with either of them. It didn’t seem fair to him. He deserved better company.

“I’ll go ahead and check the box for ‘surly,’ then,” Matt said, after a moment.

If Jason had said that, Filo might’ve laughed, but just now, he couldn’t forget the way Matt had looked at him in the shop. He’d managed to blend boredom and judgment in his expression. It reminded Filo too much of how Morgan used to look at him.

Matt edged closer, weaving carefully around the stacks of boxes. The orb floated along with him, bringing more light. “That bracelet,” he said, pointing. “What’s it for?”

Filo glanced at his wrist. The bracelet had been a gift from Alice, years ago, and he had worn it every day since she gave it to him. It was made of small squares of hawthorn strung together, each one carved with a different protective rune and steeped in a brew of blood and clover. She’d made identical bracelets for Nasser and Jason.

“It’s supposed to keep faeries away from me,” he said. “Not that it’s working right now.”

Matt snorted. “Who made it for you?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. It’s just an odd little trinket. It smells awful,” he noted, wrinkling his nose. “So, yes, that’ll keep some fey from getting close. But it doesn’t burn outright, does it? It doesn’t hurt anyone who doesn’t mean to hurt you.”

Filo paused. “How do you know that?”

“It’s in the runes. They’re very beautiful. Warm.”

Matt reached over, his hand hovering just over the wood. Filo jerked his hand away.

“Intent is important in magic,” Matt said. “You know this. You can make ten amulets for ten people, and even if you go through the exact same steps each time, the enchantment will always come out a little differently. The way you feel when you’re making it and the way you feel about the person or purpose to which it will go will impact the object, how it behaves. And this one? Intentional or not, it is full of love. It will lie quietly on your wrist but scorch the hands of someone who touches you with ill intent. So I was curious. Who made it?”

For a moment, Filo didn’t answer. “You seem to know a lot about these things.”

Shrugging, Matt said, “When I first came to live with my father, his wife made bracelets like yours for her children, my human half-siblings, so I would stay away from them. Those bracelets were much stronger than yours and they were unaffected by
my
intent. I would break out in hives if I came too close, so I learned very quickly to avoid my half-siblings. But they’ve always had so much of their mother in them. They used to shove me into the upstairs closet, throw their bracelets in and lock the door. I’d be trapped for hours, scratching myself bloody, until my father came home and let me out.”

All the while, Matt stared at Filo’s bracelet. When he finished, he looked up at Filo with a strange, blank expression. “I think I hate humans.”

“You’re human, too, you know,” Filo said.

“Not human enough. A bit like you, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know.” Matt’s eyes glinted like polished coins. “Do you know how the fey think of those with the Sight? They don’t exactly see a human when they look at you, but they don’t see a non-human, either. They see something half-transformed by magic. Something in-between. Normals look at you the same way. You’re not one of them, but you’re not quite something else. To humans and fey alike, you are
other
. As long as they cannot classify you, they cannot accept you.”

“And the Guild?” Filo asked. “How do they classify themselves?”

Matt’s mouth curled up into a smile so thin and sharp Filo thought he could cut himself on it. “They see themselves as human,” he said. “Different from other humans, but human still. But even among Guild folk, you wouldn’t belong. They only like humans who know their ways, who think and talk and act like them. Not humans like you. You are a human boy with the Sight who was raised by faeries. A changeling.
Other
.”

Filo turned back to the shelf. He scanned the spines without really seeing them.
Oh, I bet all the humans can tell with you,
Matt had said. Filo clenched his fists without meaning to. He could feel magic prickling in his palms, eager to be released. “Look,” he started, “I don’t know what you’re trying to—”

He broke off when the room was suddenly plunged into darkness, so thick and dark and perfect that Filo’s Sighted eyes picked up nothing. He whirled around, reaching out with one hand, but if Matt was gone or just standing silently out of reach, he didn’t know. In the distance, he thought he heard the echo of laughter.

They had been wandering for several blocks when Henry stopped in front of a faded storefront. The sign above the door was faded beyond readability and the glass was too cloudy to see inside. Consulting the address Matt had given him, Henry said, “I think this is the place.”

“Let’s find out.” Lee turned the doorknob. It resisted a little, but then creaked open. The glass orb darted into the building ahead of her, throwing light.

The room was full of boxes. Heaps of boxes. More boxes than Lee knew what to do with. None of them appeared to be labeled.

As he looked around, Henry said, “How many spiders do you think are in here?”

Lee shuddered. “Can’t you charm spiders?”

“I don’t think anyone can control spiders,” Henry said soberly. “Say goodbye to your fingers while you have the chance.”

With a great sigh, Lee opened the nearest box. Books were jammed inside, but she couldn’t make out any of the titles. When she reached for the glass orb, it drifted toward her. She channeled more energy into it, until she could see properly. Henry had seemed unbothered by the dimness—but, then again, he had the Sight. He needed less light to see than she did.