Текст книги "Irregulars "
Автор книги: Astrid Amara
Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 32 страниц)
The scarlet handwheel spun, and then with a hiss, as if releasing some foreign atmosphere, the heavy hatch door swung open.
***
Few places remained just as Falk remembered first seeing them. But as he dropped down onto one of the wooden stools at the bar and took a deep breath of the smoky speakeasy atmosphere, he felt as if he’d stepped back to the first weeks after Frank’s death. It all seemed the same: the close proportions of the circular chamber, the shadowy patrons with their odd mix of races and lowered voices, the faint drone of an antique phonograph playing a scratched record of Selkie torch songs. Hell, even the dark stains defacing the oak counter looked like the ones Henry remembered drunkenly tracing with his one good hand.
Henry touched a deep gouge in the wood, noting against his will how it cut and curved to form a rickety F.
In an instant, ninety-four years seemed to roll back. He felt swallowed by recollection. An ache flashed through his chest and flared across his hand with the intensity of a raw wound. Reflexively, Henry curled his arm against his chest as if he could shield himself from injuries inflicted so long ago.
How could mere memory hurt so badly, Henry wondered. How could entire empires rise and fall and all the while part of him still remained lying there on that cold steel table with Frank’s knife buried in his heart? Why couldn’t it ever just be over?
“Lucky number seven?” Jason swung onto the stool beside him and flashed him a warm, charming smile. His cologne of cinnamon and coffee pushed back the dull, dead taste in Henry’s mouth.
“What?” Henry asked.
“Carved into the bar counter. It’s a seven, isn’t it?”
“It—” And suddenly Henry realized that Jason was right. He’d been looking at the carving upside down and misread it. “Yeah. Probably left by one of the famous dwarves.”
Jason gave him an uncertain look, then laughed.
“You nearly had me there,” he admitted easily.
Henry almost laughed himself, seeing such a friendly expression animate the guise of Agent August’s normally grim face. Watching Jason peer at the beer pulls and study the colorful array of liquor bottles behind the bar, Henry felt as though he could almost see Jason through the glamour disguising him. Jason caught him staring and flushed slightly.
“I’m gawking, aren’t I?”
“Not more than anyone new to the place would,” Henry assured him.
“I was just wondering if this is where Arrogant Bastard Ale really comes from?” Jason inclined his head toward the large crest of a scowling gargoyle that hung behind the bar. “Or is it an import?”
“It’s made here. Red Ogre must have finally gotten an export license for the United States…”
Henry wasn’t certain of why, but now with Jason sitting beside him he suddenly took notice of all the little ways in which Red Ogre’s tower had altered since he’d last cared enough to really look around him.
The gleaming amber light fixtures with their sleek chrome fittings could have come from an IKEA catalogue. Photos of faerie celebrities and kelpie queens hung on the walls where once there’d been only yellowed etchings. Even the melody that he’d initially recognized revealed itself to be no more than a catchy sample cut into a modern remix.
Jason tapped his fingers across the bar in time to the new, jazzy bass line.
Red Ogre herself was nowhere to be seen; most likely she was somewhere below, tending her hops and oak barrels. However, her pale wife, Sorcha, moved behind the length of the bar with all the assurance and musical grace of a full-blooded sidhe; even though she’d been cast out from Tuatha Dé Dannan society for her passionate love of Red Ogre, she still wore her golden hair in a courtier’s braided crown and held her head high as she glided silently up to them to take their orders.
“Half-Dead.” She inclined her head in easy acknowledgement but then paused as she caught sight of his companion. Jason offered her a winning smile, which looked utterly out of place on August’s sardonic face and brought the faintest crease to Sorcha’s brow.
“Here on business?” she inquired softly.
“Not officially, my beauty,” Henry replied. “But there is a fellow here we’d like a word with.”
“Red Ogre won’t be happy if you’ve come to drag one of her regulars out.”
“Nah. You know me, Lady Sorcha, I wouldn’t—”
“Yes, I know you, Half-Dead, but your companion has a rather different reputation, I think.” She settled a firmly disapproving glower on Jason.
“I’m just along for moral support and a good drink, ma’am,” Jason replied. Then he turned the pockets of his jacket inside out. “See, I’m not even carrying my badge. It’s my day off.”
Sorcha gave a little laugh at that but then seemed to catch herself. She raised a gleaming golden brow and peered at Jason a little too intensely for Henry’s liking.
“The man we’re looking for isn’t a regular.” Henry drew Sorcha’s attention back to himself. “He’ll only just have arrived. Goes by the name of Phipps.”
“Him.” Sorcha’s expression lifted immediately and she nodded. “Red suspected that he’d have a few visitors tracking him down…” Sorcha lowered her satin-soft voice. “Who in this day and age pays with gold dust, really? Hasn’t he heard of American Express?”
“Mind telling us which room he’s rented?” Henry inquired, though he knew what the answer would be.
“Mind ordering a drink to make it worth my while?” Sorcha returned.
“My pleasure, Lady Sorcha. I’ll have a Rotten Rye whisky and my associate—”
“A pint of the Spartacus Hard Cider,” Jason decided for himself. Henry shot him a warning glance, but Jason just appeared all the more pleased with himself.
When Sorcha moved away to procure their drinks, Henry hunched a little nearer to Jason.
“The cider you ordered is made from goblin fruits—”
“I know. I was reading about it up on the menu board. It says I’ll never taste better.” Then Jason lowered his voice and glanced meaningfully to Sorcha. “She looks human.”
Henry simply nodded.
“All the Tuatha Dé Dannan clan look human. Her, and you as well. Your ancestors were human once but also very ambitions as a people. They stole immense powers from other realms and used them without understanding the cost.” Henry wasn’t one to recount old legends, but he thought that this might be something Jason would need to know. Because one day he might very well find himself in the position of his ancestors, calling up murderous forces. “Claiming and wielding great power—the kind that sunders seas or drains the lives from entire armies—it changes you.”
“Like it turns you into a giant snake or something like that?” Jason asked. He appeared to be only half joking.
“Well, I can’t say that it hasn’t ever happened,” Henry conceded. “But I’m not talking about a superficial transformation. I mean a more fundamental change, an effect that reaches all the way down to your soul and slowly distorts your whole being. You already know that magic can alter how you perceive the world around you. It can show you things that almost no one else can even understand.”
Jason’s expression went serious. Yeah, Jason understood that part all too well.
“Wielding that power removes you from the rest of humanity even further. You do it long enough and you can become alienated from all those mundane experiences of life that allow people to understand each other. The things that make us feel connected to each other and help us give a damn about our fellow human beings. And once you stop caring, once the only thing left in your life is power itself, you become capable of sacrificing even those people who you once thought you loved just for the sake of more power.” Henry tried not to sound bitter, but it was hard. “Believe me, the greatest magic always comes at a cost. Often as not, what you sacrifice is your humanity.”
“Something like that happened to you, didn’t it? You had to pay a price for your power?” Jason asked suddenly and softly.
“What? No—I mean, sort of, but not like you’re thinking.” Henry shook his head. “I wasn’t the guy who went questing for power over life and death. I wasn’t so smart or ambitious. I was just too naive to realize that he’d kill me to fulfill his aspirations.”
Jason blanched slightly at Henry’s words but then asked, “But you’re alive now. So what happened?”
“It went wrong.” Henry hadn’t spoken of that cold April morning since his debriefing ninety-four years ago; it had always seemed too soon. He wasn’t really certain why he was talking about it now, except that Jason made it feel like such a long time ago. “The officer in charge, the one who wanted to claim power over death—”
“Franklyn Fairgate, right?” Jason asked. “The man who recruited you.”
Henry hadn’t expected Jason to remember that. How strange it seemed to hear Frank’s name spoken by someone else, and in that unconcerned tone.
“Yeah, that’s right.” Henry couldn’t meet Jason’s interested gaze. He stared down at the stained counter in front of him. “Frank was no slouch. He just got one little detail of the ritual wrong. The incantations, the bronze knife, the symbols of binding—he had all that dead on. But he hadn’t understood what it meant to make a willing sacrifice of precious life. He hadn’t realized that immense power only gives itself to those prepared to lose everything for its sake. He figured that it would be enough to sacrifice his…friend.”
Henry swallowed hard against the tight feeling in his throat. He wished Sorcha would hurry up with his drink. “Long story short, he miscalculated and ended up getting himself and about a hundred other guys killed. I was the only one of Frank’s crew that walked out of the compound more or less alive.”
“That must have been really hard…” Jason sounded at a loss. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, everybody’s got a sob story.” Falk glanced across the bar to see Sorcha gliding silently toward them with their drinks. Last thing he needed was for her to see him going soft and self-pitying.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” he warned Jason. Then he raised his voice in greeting to Sorcha. “And speaking of angels. Sorcha, you’re a vision of lovely mercy for a thirsty man.”
“If flattery were cash, you’d have made me a wealthy woman a hundred times over, Half-Dead,” Sorcha replied with an amused smile.
Jason accepted his pint of luminous gold cider. Henry exchanged his blood-red whiskey shot for a gold goblin’s coin and didn’t ask for his change. In return, Sorcha told him a room number and withdrew to tend the other patrons gathered around the bar and slouching at the shadowy tables.
“Here’s to walking away.” Falk lifted his whisky.
“More or less alive,” Jason finished.
Henry tossed his Rotten Rye back and felt it burn down to the pit of his belly.
Jason took a more measured taste of his cider, but after his initial swig, his face lit up like he’d just discovered jacking off. Then he all but dived into his pint.
“This stuff is amazing. It’s got to be the most delicious thing I’ve tasted in my life,” Jason informed him. “Have you tried it?”
“I’m more of a whisky man, myself,” Henry replied. That was when he wasn’t swigging back poison to keep himself on the brink of the shade lands.
“Yeah, but this is…I can’t even think of a word beautiful enough to describe it. It’s like drinking Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn Allegro’.” Jason clutched the glass between his hands, cradling the last inch of radiant liquor. Then he thrust the glass toward Henry. “You have to try it.”
“Don’t you want it?” Henry asked.
“Of course, but I want you to taste it more.” Jason slid the glass over to Henry.
There had been more than one story of drinking buddies beating each other nearly blind over a bottle of this goblin cider. And yet here was Jason, willing to relinquish it to him.
“Don’t tell me you’re weirded out by drinking out of the same glass because—”
“That’s it exactly. I’m a clean freak.” Henry actually laughed at the idea. Then he lifted the glass and drank.
Jason was right. It was delicious, beyond mere taste. Golden light of a fall afternoon spread through Henry. He smelled sweet, ripe fruit and brilliant fallen leaves. He faintly heard a bird singing. And in the midst of it all, he tasted just a hint of Jason’s warm lips. Henry allowed himself to savor it for only a moment.
He wasn’t here to daydream about Jason’s mouth or the comfort of his company. And it wouldn’t do him or Jason any good to linger on either thought.
“It’s good. Probably too good to be true,” Henry said and set the glass aside. “Now come along, Agent August. There’s a man in room ten we need to talk to.”
***
A narrow stairwell led them down what felt like fifteen floors and then opened into a hall cramped and corroded enough to look like it had come from a sunken submarine. The air felt thick in Jason’s lungs and tasted like seawater. Out of the corner of his eye Jason even thought he saw a school of silvery fish drift by. Above them, clustering around the lights fixtures, clouds of jellyfish appeared to be feeding on the insects drawn to the diffuse light.
Suddenly Jason wondered if he could be drowning and not know it. He crushed the thought. Falk wouldn’t let that happen to him.
Still, only a decade of practice in halfway houses and psychiatric assessments allowed him to keep calm and simply follow Falk through the curving hallway while green-eyed sharks swam past. Keeping his gaze focused on the vision his glasses offered, Jason saw only a series of heavy hatch doors, each bearing a painted red number.
They reached ten, and Jason realized that they weren’t the first ones to come after Phipps. The heavy metal door bore deep dents had obviously been forced. A thick fungal stench poured out into the hall. The voices that rumbled from behind the battered hatch sounded as low and deep as an avalanche.
“Troll,” Falk mouthed and he moved quickly between Jason the door. He dropped one hand into his pocket and Jason wondered if he was going for his badge or his knife. But Falk just pulled out his flask and took a swig. Then he edged the door open with his foot. It swung in, exposing the cramped room within and its three occupants.
A withered, leathery man the size of a child spun on them. He wore nothing but a pair of knee-high black socks and held what looked like a soldering iron in his bony fist.
The other two occupied a half-collapsed bed. Jason hardly recognized Phipps from where he lay, gasping beneath what looked like a rockslide. Then the lichen-speckled, stone-gray creature holding Phipps turned its head to glower at Falk and Jason. Its eyes were pits, and when it opened the ragged chasm of its mouth, a sound like cracking boulders rolled out. Jason guessed that was the troll.
“Now here’s a picture for the scrapbook,” Henry commented offhandedly. He addressed the leathery little man standing closest to them. “Do you always get up to these kinds of hijinks right after posting bail?”
“God’s twat! What hole did you dirty badges crawl out of? If you haven’t been told, you got no authority here, you dick wadcutters,” the little man spat. “This is my personal business.”
“Looks personal enough,” Falk replied. “The thing is, I’ve got private business of my own to discuss with Phipps there.”
“I got him first. You can have him when we’re done!”
“We all know he won’t be doing any talking after you and your troll moll have rammed that soldering iron up his ass.”
Jason’s stomach lurched at the thought.
“He owes me—”
“He owes everybody,” Falk cut the little man off. “But he isn’t going to be able to pay no matter what you do to him. His accounts have been frozen by NIAD.”
“Sez you.”
“Yeah, sez me,” Falk agreed. Almost casually, he pulled his switchblade from his pocket. “So, you can believe me and move along or we can knock heads and see who goes home with a bloody nose.”
The bed groaned as the troll rose from it. The creature’s jagged skull gouged furrows in the metal ceiling as it straightened to its full height.
Jason’s heart lurched and then started pounding like a jackhammer. A sudden cold sweat dampened his skin. This was going to be just like the fight in the HRD Coffee Shop—only that troll looked far too big and hard for a mere switchblade to penetrate.
That familiar calming melody rose in the back of his mind, but he resisted it. If Falk needed his help, he couldn’t just huddle in a corner humming to himself like a hapless basket case. For the first time since he’d been a child, he sought the blade-sharp notes of a different melody. He held them ready but couldn’t bring himself to unleash them.
“Nice knife, badge.” The little man sneered at Falk. “What are you gonna do, clip my nails?”
In response Falk growled a throaty word and spat on the blade. Even with his glasses on, Jason saw the white flame that gushed up from the silver spittle.
“Whoa!” The little man dropped his soldering iron and hopped back to his troll companion’s rocky shins.
“Nothing to fear here.” Falk stepped into the room, smiling like he was delivering a punch line. Wisps of white mist rose in his wake and Jason felt the difference in the atmosphere like a sudden frost in the air. Black shadows churned at the edge of his vision.
“I just thought you two might want a night-light for the dark when I open the shade lands.” Falk blazed as brightly as the flame of his blade.
Phipps issued a weak, sick groan from where he lay, spilled across the broken bed. A weirdly childlike screech escaped the troll and it shook its rumpled head wildly. At its feet the leathery little man blanched to dull gray.
“No need to turn nasty, badge.” He gave Falk a terrified grin, displaying teeth as ragged as bottle caps. “Linda and me believe you. We’ll just be moving along.”
“You got till the count of three to scram,” Falk replied coldly. “And I’m already on two.”
They bolted through the door. Jason had to step back to avoid being rolled over. He watched them race to the stairs and clamber up in a racket of metallic scrapes and odd curses.
When he stepped inside the cramped room, he found Falk straightening Phipps up to sitting. Not even a hint of the murky darkness of the shade lands remained. The overhead light cast bright white illumination across Phipps and the squalid little room.
“Thank you,” Phipps said to Falk. He brushed his silver-gray hair back from his face and made a hopeless attempt to straighten his torn silk pajamas. A large bruise was already darkening the left side of his face. The holes in his clothes afforded Jason a view of red abrasions.
“No,” Falk replied. “Don’t thank me. I’m likely to do worse to you myself.”
Phipps glanced quickly, searchingly, to Jason and then swallowed like it hurt.
Despite his harsh words, Falk dragged a tiny table to Phipps’s bedside and, after rummaging through a couple drawers in his dresser, brought over a bottle of what looked like wine. He produced a tin cup from his coat pocket and set it in front of Phipps.
For his part Jason didn’t know what to feel. Half of him still felt indebted to Phipps for the kindness he’d shown him. But that only made him feel all the more betrayed, knowing now that the man had sold him like some knickknack.
Jason leaned against Phipps’s wooden dresser, trying to affect an air of indifference.
“Well, you certainly have the advantage over me—I take it that you are Irregulars?”
Falk just gave a curt nod.
“You’ve come calling to discuss something you discovered after you broke into my business, I suppose?”
“Right again,” Falk allowed.
“Jason Shamir…” Phipps nodded to himself as if there could be no other answer. “I had wondered how quickly you’d penetrate the anonymity spell placed on him. I hadn’t thought quite so soon.”
“You mean not before Cethur Greine set you up with asylum in exchange for the information you gave him, yeah?” Falk’s tone remained conversational. It reminded Jason a little of his own interrogation.
“Yes. Another day at least.” Phipps sighed heavily, then glanced forlornly to the battered mass of his door. “I really do need to look into recovering my security system.”
“You might want to invest in something electronic this time.” Falk found a chair and seated himself across from Phipps. “The ghosts of murdered little girls just aren’t as reliable as they used to be.”
Phipps raised his eyes to Falk.
“I take it that you were the one that got in.” Phipps offered Falk a mock salute. “I had wondered how those fresh-faced fascists made it through the door so very quickly.”
“Maybe you just left it unlocked.” Falk picked up the wine bottle, pulled the cork free, and set the bottle back down in front of Phipps.
“Very civilized of you,” Phipps commented. “Or is this to be a last drink for a condemned man?”
“That would depend on how cooperative you decide to be,” Falk responded.
Phipps filled the tin cup himself and swallowed the contents in a single gulp.
“Ask what you want.” He refilled the cup. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Let’s start with exactly what information you sold to Greine,” Falk prompted.
“Everything I knew and a few things one might call conjecture.” This time Phipps took a more refined sip of the white wine. “The boy was obviously in possession of the Stone of Fal. I knew that the moment I heard him singing. And once I managed to glimpse past that anonymity spell I realized that he was the spitting image of Cethur Greine himself—”
“What?” Jason couldn’t help himself. Falk shot him a silencing glance, then returned his attention to Phipps.
“By that you mean you suspected he was the Greine’s son?”
“Exactly,” Phipps replied. “There have always been those rumors about the fruit of Greine’s wedding night. Born dead, thrown into the sea. Supposedly eaten, if you trust the word of a certain Moth Man—”
“Never have before,” Falk replied. “Wouldn’t start now.”
Phipps nodded.
“None of my informants agreed on what fate had befallen the child, but they all agreed that the princess had borne Greine an heir. And I realized that he hadn’t died at all. He’d grown up in the earthly realm of his ancestors. When I passed that on to Greine he seemed quite pleased.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t he be?” Falk drew his own flask from his pocket and took swig. “You gave him exactly the ammunition he needed to lay legal claim on Jason and the stone.”
“If it matters at all, I’d like to point out that Greine wasn’t my first choice,” Phipps stated. “If your raid hadn’t ruined everything, Jason would have been back in the hands of his mother’s agents by now.”
“You mean those two who just left?” Falk raised his brows. “Because I got it from one of their colleagues that they’d rather kill Jason than chance him falling into Greine’s grasp. So you’d be doing him no kindness there. Or did you mean that you tried to sell him back to the mother who hid him away in the first place?”
Phipps pulled a pained face that made Jason want to slap him. “It wasn’t as if I were spoiled for choices, was I? I contacted the princess first but heard nothing back. Then I found out that she’d been locked away, sleeping in a tower for the last decade. Shortly after that I was approached by that gruesome brownie about locating the Stone of Fal…And, well, I’d already located it, hadn’t I?”
“I—” Jason barely caught himself; he felt so betrayed—and not just by Phipps but also by his revelations. By the fact that some tyrant had claim over him as his father while the man Jason had known and loved…Jason didn’t even know who he had been. And his mother– if possible, he knew even less of her.
“I read that Jason Shamir had only been working for you for seven weeks,” Jason ground out. “Did you start looking for buyers the minute you hired him, you ghoul?”
“Yes. I knew he was something rare and valuable the moment I laid eyes on him and such commodities are what I deal in.” Phipps drew himself up straight as though there was some dignity to be claimed by the admission. He narrowed his gray eyes at Jason. “But don’t pretend that you Irregulars are just going to pat that boy on the head and turn him over to his daddy. We all know that’s not the case. Your people want the stone just as badly as anyone. Unless Cethur Greine acts very fast, your so-called Research and Development people will have carved the stone out and slapped together some zombie patch job to fob off on him.” Phipps sneered at Jason. “You Irregulars like to claim that you’re defending us all from ourselves, but isn’t it just so convenient that to do so you have to seize every talisman and charm you can impound?”
Jason fought to maintain a neutral expression. He didn’t know anything about the Irregulars as an organization, but he trusted Falk and didn’t believe Phipps.
Falk scowled but denied nothing.
“For all you know I’ve done the boy a favor.” Phipps took another drink. “At least his own father might not be quite so keen to strip him to the bone.”
At that, Falk gave a derisive snort.
“Yeah, Greine’s well known for his decency and compassion,” Falk replied.
Phipps shrugged, but something like melancholy showed in his expression. He took another slow, measured drink from the tin cup.
“I would have preferred it if Jason had ended up with his mother,” Phipps admitted. “I did like the boy, actually. He was the best employee I ever had.”
Jason glared at Phipps. Clearly he hadn’t liked him enough to resist the temptation to sell him.
“You’re such a hypocrite,” Jason snapped. “You auction someone off to the highest bidder and then sit around looking morose and making accusations about other people’s evil intentions! What utter bullshit!”
“I did what I could for him,” Phipps snapped back. “But it wasn’t as if I could have kept him a secret! That anonymity spell placed on him may have hidden him through his childhood, but it wasn’t going to last much longer. And especially not if he kept singing. I could see it wearing away day by day. In a week’s time it would have burned out completely. In place of a plain-faced nobody for an employee, I would’ve had a shining sidhe prince working my till and enchanting half the city with his songs. How long do you think it would have taken the revolutionaries or Greine to notice him after that?”
“Who knows,” Henry answered. “But you didn’t try, did you?”
“Oh, go to hell,” Phipps replied. He glowered between the two of them, lifted his cup, and then set it down without drinking. “I did try, actually. Not that it’s any of your damn business.” Phipps sounded almost defeated. “The day after he started working for me I cast a second anonymity spell over him. It should have lasted three years, but he seared through it like a flame through paraffin. An hour after I cast it, the spell had burned off. Even if I’d decided to, I couldn’t have kept him.”
“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t meant to be kept,” Falk replied. “Did you provide Greine with means to verify Jason’s paternity?”
“Blood. He cut his hand once while restringing a harp for me. I lent him my kerchief but didn’t wash it afterwards. Blood like his always has a use.”
Jason remembered that afternoon. At the time he’d been embarrassed about letting his hand slip and then bleeding all over Mr. Phipps’s work table. He’d also been touched by Phipps’s concern for him.
God, he’d been a pathetic sucker.
He had to look away from Phipps’s self-satisfied face to keep from giving this whole charade away with a furious tirade of obscenities and accusations.
Not that he wanted to keep standing here, listening to Phipps recount all the ways he’d been deceived and used. What an idiot he’d been. What a fucking idiot.
He didn’t want to stay in this dank little room one more minute.
He stole a quick glance to Falk only to catch Falk considering him in return. Whatever Falk read in his expression, it seemed to displease him. He dropped his flask back into one of his deep pockets and stood.
“I think that’s about all we need to know for now,” Falk told Phipps. “Can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but you were certainly informative.”
Phipps gave a wave of his hand as if he were shooing away flies.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” he replied.
Falk smiled and replied, “If I were you I’d be more worried about trolls hitting me on their way in.”
***
Henry saw it coming, though it impressed him that Jason got all the way to the Elysian Fields before he blew his lid. He possessed a remarkable level of restraint for such a young man, particularly one of sidhe heritage.
Though right this moment he looked mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets. The muscles of his jaw worked like flexing fists.
He kept silent and still while Henry called the glamour of Agent August’s guise off him; Henry drew the illusion into his own lungs like he was taking a deep drag from a clove cigarette. He swallowed the slight burn, tasting both the sting of faerie dust and the natural spice of Jason’s body.
Watching Jason as the glamour receded, Henry wondered how he’d previously failed to notice the subtle bronze luster of his skin or the gold gleaming through his dark eyes. The anonymity spell shielding Jason must have once been truly powerful to render such a presence unremarkable.
But Phipps hadn’t been lying about the speed at which the spell was degrading. Little to none of it would be left by the day’s end.
Even scowling and bristling with anger, an unearthly grace permeated Jason’s motions. The hint of a hot, sweet spice perfumed the air around him.
Jason shoved his battered glasses into the pocket of his red sweat jacket and then wheeled back from Henry, scattering the creamy white butterflies fluttering on the flowers all around them.
“That son of a bitch!” Jason kicked at the ground hard. Clods of soil and miniature lilacs went flying. “Just sitting there looking sorry for himself while he fed us that bullshit about how much it pained him to sell me out! Literally—fucking—sell me out!”
Henry kept his trap shut. No doubt, Jason had been screwed over. Offering him some lip service about how things could have been worse or counseling him to take a philosophical view would only further insult his justifiable anger.
He had a right to blow off some steam. In his position Henry would have probably loaded a pistol and blown off much more.
