section of the bar clear.
Agent Nori removed her gun and handed it to the bouncer, who, in return, gave her a claim stub. Then she headed for the inner door.
“Shouldn’t we sign the ledger?” I asked as Nori marched me past it. They were always so insistent about that damn ledger. I glanced at the bouncer, hoping he’d back me up, but his attention was devoted to cleaning his fingernails with the tips of the horns sprouting from his head.
with the tips of the horns sprouting from his head.
“Time isn’t an issue for you, Miss Craft,” Nori said, motioning me forward.
I stared at the door. This is it.
Death fol owed me al the way to the threshold, and that was apparently as far as he could go. Stil he held on to my arm, his fingers sliding down to my wrist, my hand, until he clutched just the tips of my fingers. Then we were too far away to touch.
“Come back to me,” he whispered as the door closed.
Oh, I intended to. But now I had to visit Faerie.
Chapter 29
There were fewer fae in the bar than in my previous visits.
Those who were present glanced up as we entered, and then immediately looked back down, apparently intent on their beers. A hush rol ed over the bar.
They’re afraid of Nori? Or more likely, the authority she represented.
I clutched PC tight, hugging him to my chest. As I did, I caught a glimpse of my hands. Once again blood stained the undersides of my fingers and coated my palms. Damn.
I’d forgotten about that. I stopped to dig my gloves out from under PC and Nori turned. The thin membrane slid across her eyes as she blinked and her wings released a sharp keening sound, but she said nothing as I pul ed the gloves on. She, I noticed, didn’t have blood on her hands.
No one tried to stop us as she escorted me to the old hardwood growing out of the center of the room. Then we were in the frozen hal s of the winter court, stars caught in ice over our heads and silent ice guardians lining the sprawling cavern. I faltered, coming to a complete stop a step past the pil ar.
“The ice is neither cold nor slick,” Nori said, misinterpreting my hesitancy. Of course, she had no way of knowing I’d passed this way before. She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “It’s just a hal way. A passage that joins places.”
I nodded, fal ing in step behind her again. When Rianna had brought me here, I’d seen Faerie only with my eyes.
This time my psyche reached across the planes, but as This time my psyche reached across the planes, but as soon as I’d stepped around the pil ar, the wisps of Aetheric energy and the rot of the land of the dead had vanished.
Both had been thin inside the Eternal Bloom, but they’d been visible. Now they were gone. Did my shields suddenly snap back in place? I stared around as I walked.
The ice-encrusted wal s glowed with some force I’d never seen before, and shimmering glyphs of power floated on the surface of the carved guardians. Well, I definitely didn’t notice that last time. Clearly I was stil seeing multiple planes. But . . .
“Nothing decays here, does it?”
Agent Nori turned toward me. “There are ancient battlefields from the early ages. The fal en stil stare at the sky, the red blood soaking the ground.”
A “no” would have been sufficient.
I continued to look around in amazement. I knew I wasn’t seeing primarily with my eyes—or possibly not with my eyes at al . I was seeing Faerie as it was, just pure Faerie with its strange magics and interesting concept of reality.
And it was beautiful.
Agent Nori paused. “A moment,” she said, and then seemed to shake herself. The double image around her shimmered, the human face vanishing so that only the sharp, blue-tinted fae mien remained. A sigh escaped her as she stretched, and her iridescent dragonfly wings caught the light from the frozen stars as she fanned them behind her.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, earning me another look, which on her now-foreign features was either bemusement or confusion. I couldn’t tel which. “Being wrapped in the glamour,” I said to clarify.
“It is . . . confining.”
“Then why do it?” I didn’t real y expect her to answer. I was talking because I was nervous, and silence made the strange icy hal way more ominous. “Fae depend on mortal belief, and yet most fae hide behind glamours. Wouldn’t it belief, and yet most fae hide behind glamours. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to be seen? If the glamour is also uncomfortable . . . ?”