“Alex,” Caleb said, stepping between Malik and me.
“Please, listen to what he has to say.”
I gaped at Caleb. Fae don’t say please, just like they don’t thank you or apologize. Words had power and al of those words acknowledged a debt. Debts with fae were binding.
“Please,” he said again, and I felt the imbalance hanging in the air between us. If I did as he asked, he’d be indebted to me. Not that I wanted that, but in al the years I’d lived in his house, he’d never once said please. The fact that my hearing Malik out was worth Caleb’s indebting himself to hearing Malik out was worth Caleb’s indebting himself to me meant that whatever the other fae had to say was important.
The phone chirped in my hand, letting me know it had powered on. I glanced at it, then hesitated and reached out with my ability to sense magic. Neither fae carried any charms. Caleb was one of those very rare fae who could manipulate the Aetheric, and his skin tingled in my senses with residual magic from a ward he’d been crafting recently, but Malik didn’t have a trace of residual magic on him. And he certainly didn’t have a trace of the spel s I’d felt in the feet or the construct. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved; it just meant he wasn’t carrying any charms. Stil , if Caleb was wil ing to indebt himself . . . I lowered the phone, letting the screen fal asleep again.
“I’m listening,” I said, turning to close the door. Then I stopped, my gaze stuck on the porch.
“Al?” I could hear the frown in Caleb’s voice. “Alex, what is it?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just stood there, shock reverberating down my spine. Outside my door, in the very center of the landing, was a dagger.
Caleb sprinted across the room. When he saw the dagger he cursed in one of the fast, fluid languages of the fae. I couldn’t understand the words, but from the tone I could tel he was pissed and maybe a little freaked. Or maybe I was projecting. Caleb shoved his hand against the doorjamb to check the house wards, but I doubted he’d find anything. The dagger had been driven into the wood in the middle of the smal landing. Caleb’s wards didn’t reach that far. I swal owed, glancing at Malik—who watched with curiosity but hadn’t moved.
The reassuring weight of the phone stil fil ed my hand. I flicked the screen lock off and opened the phone app. I got as far as dialing the nine when Caleb plucked the phone from my trembling fingers.
“Don’t do anything hasty,” he said, his voice low.
“Don’t do anything hasty,” he said, his voice low.
“Ha sty? Hasty? You brought the fae who’s been threatening me into the house and now there’s a dagger driven into the middle of my porch. I think I’m already behind on cal ing the police. And don’t tel me this isn’t connected.”
I made a wide, sweeping gesture to include both Malik and the dagger protruding from one of the porch beams, the blade embedded deep enough that the ornate hilt touched the wood. It pinned a scrap of paper to the porch. A note?
From where I stood, stil inside the house, the yel owing parchment looked old, the edges curling and torn. The entire display looked surreal, almost innocuous, beside the saucer of milk I fil ed nightly for our resident gargoyle, but fear gripped my chest, made my breath harden in my lungs.
Someone had come to my home, to my door, and driven the dagger into my porch. And I had a good idea who.
Caleb tucked my phone into his back pocket and turned to face Malik. “What do you know about this?”
The gangly fae cocked his head to the side, one bushy eyebrow lifting as he shuffled forward. I stumbled back, out of arm’s length, and the fae hesitated. He blinked at me, as if surprised by my fear and not pleased at being the cause.
We stared at each other for a moment, and when he stepped toward the door again, I held my ground.
He peered around the doorframe and after a single glance shrugged. “It’s not mine.”
“It has to—” I stopped. No, it didn’t have to be his. He hadn’t said he didn’t put the dagger there, only that it didn’t belong to him.
Caleb obviously came to the same conclusion. “Do you know anything about the dagger or how it ended up here?”
Malik blinked his large, dark eyes, surprise at Caleb’s clarification obvious on his face. Then the surprise hardened to anger and he straightened to his ful height, his head inches from the ceiling. He tugged at the hem of his unseasonable coat, making whatever was inside clatter.