Starling (19 page)

“Well. It all makes sense now,” Fennrys murmured to himself, stunned by what he’d found. “I’m a ninja.”

C
alum Aristarchos stood in the back corner of the Rockefeller Center elevator cab as it ascended swiftly to his destination floor, high above the streets of Manhattan. When the doors slid open, there was a lovely young woman there to meet him. She wore a curve-hugging white tunic dress with a draped neckline that scooped low in both back and front, and her hair was piled in an artful cascade of ringlets on top of her head. She didn’t speak, just led him down a corridor decorated with an impressive collection of paintings that any museum in the world would have killed for. Cal had been there often enough to no longer be impressed.

At the end of the corridor, a set of glass doors opened up into an expansive boardroom that offered a staggering view of the Empire State Building and a large swath of downtown Manhattan. Sitting in a thronelike leather executive chair, behind a desk carved from a single slab of giant redwood, sat Daria Aristarchos, Cal’s mother. She regarded him coolly over the tops of her steepled, immaculately manicured fingers for a brief moment before her face broke into a maternal smile.

“Come in, darling,” she said in a low, musical voice, rising to walk around from behind her fortresslike desk. Cal stood patiently as his elegant mother embraced him. And then as she pushed him to arm’s length and examined his face. He tried not to flinch as her gaze narrowed, raking over the scars on his face. It felt almost as if his flesh was being sliced open all over again. His mother’s lips disappeared in a tight line, and he saw a fierce swell of emotion gathering behind her eyes. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, the sound of biker boots rang out over the granite floor behind him.

Cal turned to see the same young woman who’d escorted him down the hall leading the way for—of all people—Roth Starling. He was flanked by two burly guys in full bike leathers, who stopped just inside the entrance to the office and took up sentrylike positions as Roth continued on, stopping once he had reached the center of the room.

“Calum,” Daria said, glancing in Roth’s direction, “sit down, dear. We have a great deal to talk about.”

“With him?” Cal gestured at Mason’s brother. “I don’t even know him.”

“You know my sister,” Roth said in a deep voice that sounded almost like the warning growl of an animal. “You were with her in the gym during the storm.”

His gaze flicked to Cal’s scars, and Cal struggled against a sudden surge of temper. He didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. But he knew he didn’t like it.

“So?” Cal glanced nervously back and forth between his mother and Roth Starling. His first fear was that someone had spilled the actual details about what had really happened that night. Probably that little weasel Rory. And now Cal was about to get the third degree about the state of his mental health or the inappropriateness of such a ridiculous prank. Probably a tiresome lecture about not tarnishing the reputation of good old Gosforth Academy. That was what Cal was expecting. He certainly wasn’t expecting them to believe such a wild story.

And he sure as hell wasn’t expecting an even wilder one in return.

For a moment, though, as Roth Starling approached Cal’s mother, it seemed as if they had forgotten Cal was even there. Unspoken tension crackled between them, and Cal’s mother, who was tall to begin with, pulled herself up to her full height.

“The peace has been broken,” Daria said finally, her tone accusatory and weirdly formal. “Gunnar Starling has broken it.”

Roth shook his head. “You don’t know that—”

“The draugr are certainly not in the demesne of
my
house.” Daria scoffed.

“My father didn’t send draugr to attack his own daughter,” Roth countered.

“Gunnar’s daughter seems to have come through the attack remarkably unscathed.” Daria pointed at Cal with one sharp, polished nail. “The same cannot be said of my son.”

Cal stepped forward. “Mom—”

“Be
quiet
, Calum!”

“We are on the same side, Daria,” Roth said. “We want the same things.”

“Look. I
really
hate to be a bother,” Cal interjected in a sharply sarcastic voice. “But what the hell is going on here?”

“Calum—”

“
No
, Mom. Don’t tell me to shut up again. I want to know what’s happening, and obviously you want me to know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me here.” Cal turned to Roth. “I was in the gym, yeah, and I know what went on. Obviously you do too, and so I guess that means we’re all perfectly aware of the fact that the ‘storm’ was about as far from normal as a storm can get.” He looked back and forth between his mother and Roth. “So can we just cut out all this cryptic BS, bring me up to speed, and deal with whatever the hell is the problem?”

Daria Aristarchos blinked at her son, looking at him for a long moment, as if seeing him for the very first time. Her hand drifted up slowly to rest on the damaged side of his face. He let her keep it there for a moment and then brushed it aside and turned to Roth.

“Well?”

“What does he know?” Roth asked Cal’s mother.

“Nothing. Not the way he needs to now.” She turned away, walking back to her desk, and said, “I thought it might help if I asked a mutual friend to explain the situation to him.”

“Rafe?” Roth asked.

Daria nodded. “I had him wait in the boardroom.” She pressed a button on an intercom. “Send in our other guest, please, Lia.”

Cal stood there, waiting, trying not to lose his temper. In a few moments, a lean figure in a designer suit appeared at the far end of the hall, walking toward them with animal grace. Before the man reached the office, Roth turned to Cal.

“Do you know what Ragnarok is, Cal?” he asked in a low voice.

“No,” Cal answered drily. “But I’m sure there’s a cream or some pills you could get for it that would clear it right up.”

The two guys who’d accompanied Roth glared at Cal balefully, as if he’d just offered up a grievous insult.

“Calum,” his mom snapped. “If you can’t manage to act like an adult, please at least try not to embarrass me entirely.”

“I’m sorry.” Cal clenched a fist so hard his knuckles popped. He turned back to Roth. “Yeah, I know what it is. It’s the mythical end of the world, as foretold in Norse mythology. A kind of Viking apocalypse. They haven’t changed the curriculum at Gosforth since you were there, and Comparative World Religions and Ancient Belief Systems is still a required course.”

Roth’s mouth quirked in a half smile. “And there’s a good reason,” he said. “You should know that, as far as the Gosforth founding families are concerned—of which yours is one—certain of those beliefs aren’t really considered ancient.”

“Why, thank you,” said the man who’d just stepped in from the hall with a wide, warm grin on his handsome face. He had a dark, honeyed complexion and wore his hair in a helmet of thin dreadlocks. To Cal, he looked a little like he might be some kind of rock star or something. “I like to think some of us have weathered the years rather well....” He extended his hand to Cal. “You must be Calum. I met your father once. You look just like him.”

“Lord Rafe.” Daria smoothly intercepted the newcomer before he and Cal could shake hands. “Do come sit down. Can I offer you a drink?”

“Lord”?
thought Cal.
What is this guy, royalty or something?

His mother led the strange man to a chair by the window and then went to a side bar to pour him a drink from a crystal decanter. She handed it to him with a slight, graceful inclination of her head.

“You’re a queen among women, Daria Aristarchos,” he said, taking the glass with a smile. “Such a pity the world’s about to end. Otherwise I’d be inclined to take you to dinner sometime.”

Cal couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Apparently his mother couldn’t either.

“You really think we are in grave danger this time?” she asked in a voice devoid of her usual icy control.

Rafe countered her question with one of his own. “You’ve always seemed to keep yourself well-informed, Daria. What do your sources tell you?”

The shadow of a worried frown darkened Cal’s mother’s brow, but she said nothing. It seemed to Cal that she was holding back, unwilling maybe to offer up any more information than she had to. It was typical of his mother—she was the kind of woman who clung tightly to every possible advantage in any given situation where she stood to gain something. The silence stretched out until finally Roth huffed in frustration and turned to Rafe.

“Why now?” he asked.

“You know that last year there was an … incident.” Rafe raised an eyebrow at Mason’s brother.

“With the Gate.” Roth nodded. “Yes.”

“I thought that was remedied by the Fair Folk themselves,” Daria said.

“It was.” Rafe sipped his drink. “But it’s caused a lot of … for lack of a better way to put it … structural integrity issues. Take, for example, that storm the other night.”

Cal felt as though he was standing in a room where everyone had suddenly started speaking a foreign language.

The man named Rafe seemed to recognize that, suddenly. He sighed and, in a tone that sounded almost apologetic, said to Cal, “Okay, young man. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: gods and goddesses are real, realms beyond this one exist. And very few of the good citizens of New York City realize that their beloved Central Park is not, in fact, just a park. It’s a gateway to another realm, the Faerie Realm—a very dangerous place also known as the Otherworld. About half a year ago, that gate was in very real danger of being blown right off its proverbial hinges. You follow me so far?”

Cal nodded, dazed.
No …

“Right. Of course you don’t. Anyway. Cracks have appeared in the walls between the worlds. Big ones. Big enough to let things through from the realms
beyond
the Faerie kingdoms.”

“Beyond?”

“The Faerie Realm is closest to the mortal world. Beyond that lie the various realms of the gods. Olympus, Asgard, Tir Na Nog …”

“Oz?” Calum murmured weakly. Sarcasm was really the only mental defense he had left. His mother turned an angry glare on him, but Rafe put up a hand and laughed.

“I like this kid,” he said. He leaned forward, swirling the drink in his hand, and pegged Cal with an intense, unblinking stare. “Look. Think of the Otherworld—the Faerie world—as the place that lies between
here
and
there
. Humans have always lived here. The gods, for the most part, lived there. If the gods wanted to get from there to here, they had to pass through the realm of the Fair Folk. Which meant they either had to ask very nicely—treaty with the Fae—or invade them. Both options were troublesome, but still there was coming and going.” He shrugged. “Not so much now. Not anymore.”

“Why not?” Cal asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

“A while back, around 1900 or so, the Faerie King decreed the worlds should be separate. The Ways should be shut. So he did just that, and as a result, the gods have been, for the most part, cut off from this world in recent times.”

Cal looked back and forth from his mother to Roth and back to Rafe. “That’s … good, right?”

Rafe shrugged. “Yes and no. Just my opinion, but I think this realm is poorer in some ways for the absence of gods and monsters walking around freely. Although it’s much,
much
richer in others. Mankind is freer now than it’s ever been to self-determine as a species. You can chart your own course without fear of prophecies or fate or destiny stepping in.”

In the back of Cal’s mind, he was vaguely aware that Rafe had said “you,” not “we.”

“That freedom of the mortal realm—in fact, the whole damn
fate
of the mortal realm—is in danger now,” Rafe continued. “My sources tell me that the Faerie kerfuffle that caused the crack in the walls also resulted in an interesting by-product: a mortal who can walk between the worlds. Not just into the Faerie Kingdom and out again. But into the
Beyond
Realms. Into the lands of the dead.” Rafe’s expression turned suddenly grim, and his dark, diamond bright eyes shifted toward Roth. “And out again.”

“This has something to do with my family, doesn’t it?” Roth said quietly. “With my father’s thwarted prophecy.”

“It’s not totally clear to me yet. But yeah. I think so.”