City of Fae

I blinked, trying my most genial big-eyes routine on him. “Did Sovereign have something to do with it?”


He moistened his lips, and in doing so, banished the smile. “The Fae Authority is going out of their way to hunt him down, even going so far as asking the Met for assistance. I’ve not been with SO-Thirty long, but apparently the FA never ask for help. If Sovereign wasn’t directly involved, he knows someone who was.” He paused, all traces of humor gone. “He might seem to be charming, Miss O’Connor, but the fae are dangerous.”

“I’m not some love-struck groupie, ya know. I’ve met enough fae victims, willing and unwilling, to not want my fingers burned. I’m a big girl, Detective.”

“Don’t investigate this any further. Let the professionals deal with it. I don’t want to be on shift when the call comes in with your name in it.”

Well, wasn’t everyone so nice just looking out for little ol’ me. First Sovereign tells me to go home, and then one of the Met’s finest warns me off. I placed my hand over my heart and fluttered my lashes. “It’s almost as though you care.”

His soft lips curled. “It’s just … I know how they work. You’re alone in the city, no immediate family, recently made redundant from your place of work.” I winced. “A fae like Sovereign could easily make you disappear.”

Was he talking from his experience as a cop, or had he dealt with fae bespellment firsthand? “I appreciate it, but … No offense, you don’t know me. I can handle Reign.” I waved the pack. “And if not, I’ll hit him with this.”

Andrews sat back in his seat and rested his wrist over the steering wheel. “You expect to see him again then?”

I considered how Reign had wrenched me out of a room full of spiders, and then his less-than-friendly reaction when he’d learned what those spiders had collectively said to me. He seemed suspicious of me, as though I was the untrustworthy one. But, the fact he’d been loitering outside Northcliff House meant he was curious before the spiders attacked. “Maybe. Probably. I think you’re right. He knows something. What happens if the FA catch him?”

Andrews’s lips twisted, as though he’d tasted something bitter. “If he’s involved, they’ll first revoke his roaming rights, if they haven’t already, so he can’t walk freely in public without an FA escort. For someone like Sovereign, it’d ruin his public image, his career.” Andrews averted his gaze, focusing somewhere outside the car. “We suspect they lock up their more deadly suspects, although we don’t know where.” He settled his gaze on me again, this time with a sparkle of intrigue brightening his eyes. “They’re exceptionally secretive people. We’ve tried to find out more, but they’re as tight-lipped about their methods as we are about ours. Whenever we’ve had to call the FA in to collect one of their own, we rarely see their suspect in London again. Either they lock them away or send them away.”

Secretive, and yet they thrive on attention. All fae loved the limelight. It was part of their natural appeal, their innate confidence. We liked to turn them into celebrities, even though their dreadful allure was how they bespelled us. Talk about the twisted human psyche.

I didn’t believe Reign was bad, but what did I know? I could call it instinct, or intuition, but I was just as susceptible to the fae as anyone else. Life must have been so much easier without them distracting us. “Do you think they’ve always been here?”

“No.” Andrews replied too quickly to leave any room for doubt. “They don’t belong here. In ’74, when they first revealed their existence here, their numbers were sparse and spread far and wide, but now they group … flock together.”

“You sound like you’ve done your homework.”

His pliable smile brightened his expression. “I’ve had reason to.”

I didn’t point out that people flocked in the same way he’d mentioned. “Safety in numbers?”

“Something like that … But I think it has more to do with how they harvest draíocht.” He swallowed and his smile faded, despite his best efforts to keep it there. “Chancery Lane Station, where you met Sovereign … There are disused deep-level tunnels there. Deeper than the Underground. We’ve seen a sharp increase in fae incidents around that location.”

“What sort of incidents?”

“Squabbles between themselves. High incidences of UB’s: unwilling bespellments. Nothing that raises too many questions when looked at individually, but the overall picture tells a different story. Chancery Lane is a fae hot spot.” Andrews’s eyes sparkled, and I got a glimpse of the real guy behind the steely detective. Clearly this was something he felt strongly about.

“You have a theory?”

“Yeah.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “But I can’t tell you much; it’s confidential. I’ve searched Chancery Lane, gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, and officially there’s nothing there.”