City of Fae

Detective Andrews took one look at my bloody and torn dress and leaped from his car. He shrugged his jacket off and swept it around my shoulders as I sagged against him. “What happened?”


I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know, didn’t understand any of it. What had happened? Jumbled words were all I could muster.

He swept a stack of papers off the passenger seat and gently sat me inside his car. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” My shoulder burned but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I lifted my head and peered at pale faces staring through the window of the twenty-four-hour store. The staff had wanted to call the cops when I’d rushed in, bloody and disheveled. I’d hidden the dagger inside my dress, otherwise they’d have raised the alarm. I’d borrowed a phone, and after several attempts at remembering Andrews’s number from his business card, I managed to connect with the detective. I’d placated the store manager by explaining the friend I’d called was a cop.

Now, wrapped in the warmth and comfort of Andrews’s car, I watched the London streets blur by. Headlights wove milky streaks though my unfocused vision. What had I done?

“Alina, talk to me. Has someone hurt you? Did a fae—?”

“No.”

I hunched forward and pulled his coat tight against my chin. His keen gaze darted from the road to me every few seconds. Several times he asked what had happened, but I couldn’t find the words. Not yet. When I realized he was taking me home, fear spurred panic, and I begged him to take me anywhere else, just not back there, back to the spiders.

“If I take you back to headquarters, I’ll have to file a report.”

I heard the unspoken words. Whatever I said would go down on record. I’d assaulted members of the FA. Maybe worse. Would they come for me? “Not there.” Ignoring his weary sigh, I scanned the street outside. Reign had said to look up for the fae. I did, but I couldn’t see much beyond the glow of the streetlights. I might have gotten away with knocking one of the FA out back at the café, but the events in Reign’s Kensington apartment … I couldn’t bluff that. Did I kill them? Were they dead? It shouldn’t have been possible. I was human, weaker, slower. They should have easily overpowered me. Those things I did, the thoughts in my mind, the horrible urges. They weren’t my thoughts, my urges. They couldn’t be mine.

“Pull over.” I groaned.

“Alina?”

“I’m going to be sick, pull over.” He careened off the road in time for me to get the door open and empty my stomach contents onto the sidewalk. Hot shivers rippled through me and my skin itched, as though trying to crawl from my flesh. Something was very wrong with me.

“You need to go get checked out at the hospital.”

I wiped at my mouth. “No. I’ll be alright …” It was shock. Just shock. “Please, just take me somewhere safe.”





***





Andrews’s apartment looked like it had been burgled. He mumbled something about his roommate being away, and cleared magazines and papers from a chair for me to settle in. Despite the chaos, his home had the kind of warmth mine lacked. Maybe it was photographs of family gatherings and friends on nights out crowding the fireplace mantel, or the back issues of Wired magazine tossed on a coffee table. His place felt real, and safe, to my addled mind.

Sitting askew in the chair, my mind still, I tried to keep it that way by focusing on how the orange glow from the outside streetlight poured into the room and over stacks of paperwork. Clearly Andrews wasn’t a fan of filing. Scribbled notes decorated printed documents. Some articles about the fae had been circled so deeply the pen had scored through the paper.

Andrews returned to my side with antiseptic wipes. He noticed the dagger I’d placed on the table. Questions widened his eyes, but he cleaned the wound in my back without a single word. His gloved fingers worked carefully, almost reverently. “You should really get checked out at the hospital.” I mumbled a “No, it’s fine,” my thoughts too numb to care. Once the wound was clean, he let me sink in the chair, and before long, I was asleep, woken by daylight settling on my face.

“Coffee?” he asked. I blinked up at him. In loose jeans and a shirt, hair mussed from sleep, he looked utterly civilian and not at all like the steely-eyed detective I’d come to recognize. Even his smile had relaxed; sitting easy on his lips. He scratched absently at his head, caught in awkward honesty. “No offense, but you look like you need it.”