“What the hell were you doing when you should have been at work?”
The water was starting to cool, so I turned the faucet on to heat it up a little. The salts and magic were working. My skin no longer hurt, and the pounding in my head had dulled to a low throb. I’d still be weak for a while, but the minerals would help me be able to generate rock armor without too much pain in hours rather than days.
“I met this guy, this billionaire auto industry guy who’d bought up a bunch of super high-end nightclubs around the world. One thing led to another, and he invited me and like twenty other people to go with him to Ibiza. Then we decided to go to Italy to see this DJ he knows,” she said nonchalantly, as if this sort of thing happened to most people on the regular. “I just, I don’t know, lost track of time.”
Here was one area where Lochlyn and I were glaringly different. She loved to party. It wasn’t the partying that primarily attracted her, but the music. Live music was like a drug to her. As soon as she said “Ibiza,” which was known for its insanely awesome club scene, I knew there’d been no hope.
“Was it worth it?” I asked.
“When I woke up this morning, I would have said yes. Now I’m not totally sure. That was a really, really good gig I lost.”
“Any way Rodney can beg for another chance?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But right now, he’s still pissed. Pretty sure he’s not in the mood to do me any favors.”
I flipped the switch on the bathtub’s drain, and water began glugging down.
“Well, at least now you’ve got something to do tomorrow,” I said.
“Yay, court!” She made a few little claps. “And, thunder of Oberon, Petra. You have a twin sister.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head, still not quite believing it.
“What’s going through your mind?” she asked carefully. She knew better than to ask me directly about my feelings.
I let out a slow breath, stalling a little. “I don’t know her, so I can’t say I feel any connection to her at this point. But I think I feel . . . I don’t know, sorry for her?”
“Why’s that?”
“She must be so confused and alone right now,” I said. I hesitated. “But I pity her for having grown up in a mundane world thinking she was just an ordinary human. Even though I got my ass out of Faerie as fast as I could after graduation, I can’t imagine a different upbringing than I had. Being raised by Oliver, in the fortress, in Faerie . . . I wouldn’t have given that up for anything.”
“I get that,” she said softly. “I feel the same way about my childhood.”
My father’s warning about the secret pinged in my mind. “Lochlyn, I know I can trust you, and I hate to ask, but no one can know that Nicole is my sister.”
Lochlyn might have been flighty when it came to employment and her social life, but she was as loyal as they came. Still, I felt the need to seal her secrecy.
“An oath, of course,” she said. “I promise to you, Petra Maguire, that I will never reveal to anyone that Nicole the changeling is your sister unless you release me from this binding oath.”
A tingle of magic formed in the air like a fine mist, settling over us and marking the promise, and then dissipated.
I stood up in the tub and rolled my shoulders, marveling at how the movement didn’t hurt my muscles or pull at tender skin. I reached a hand around the curtain to pull my towel off the bar and inhaled deeply. The minerals and magic had given me a new lease on life, and I had a feeling I was going to need it to get Nicole out of the Duergar palace.
Chapter 10
THE NEXT MORNING, I had to stop by the Guild headquarters in Boise to pick up a duplicate bounty card, after Van Zant had destroyed the original.
My supervisor, Gus, used to be a merc but for the past ten years had ridden a desk at the Guild. I’d seen pictures of him when he was still an active bounty hunter and guessed he’d put on about sixty pounds since he left the field for his current position. I couldn’t imagine transitioning to administration, but he’d seemed to settle into it. He wasn’t so bad, as long as I made my deadlines.
I sat in his office while we waited for a magi-technician—a human with decent magical abilities—to imbue the card with the spell that would be able to ID my mark.
Gus waved a chewed-up ballpoint pen admonishingly. “You’re really pushing the timeline on this assignment, Petra. The Guild has already given you one extension on this one. You’re not going to get another. If you don’t bring the vamp in by the deadline, you’ll be—”
“Suspended from Guild work for at least a month,” I cut in. “I know, I know.”
He stuck the pen in his mouth and began gnawing on it as he straightened the piles of folders on his desk.
“I just don’t know what’s gotten into you with this one,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “Usually you’re out there kicking ass. Extensions make us all look bad.”
I sighed in the back of my throat, trying not to show my irritation. I hated it when Gus got patronizing.
“This one’s slippery,” I said.
The tech showed up with the duplicate card, saving me from any more supervisory disapproval. I stuffed it in my pocket and got the hell out of the Guild building.
I made my way to the New Gargoyle fortress the next morning without Lochlyn. Fae not sworn to the Stone Order weren’t allowed in the fortress without Marisol’s permission, and that usually meant it had to be for something important. But no one had to worry about Lochlyn being properly prepared for court. Despite living outside of Faerie since she was seventeen, she was well-versed in all the proper customs. Her mother was a courtesan in the Cait Sidhe palace, and Lochlyn had spent her youth deep in court life with the other children of courtesans.
I arrived at the fortress with a lot of time to spare, and it was by design. I wanted to sit in the mineral sauna, a treatment room where magic and the energy of stone permeated the air like thick steam. A half hour in there—the maximum anyone was allowed—should get me most of the way healed. The rest would just take time.
I went directly to the sauna, but as luck would have it, the door was locked, indicating it was occupied. At least no one else was waiting to get in. I sat down on the wooden bench to wait. The sauna was located within the gym and training area of the fortress, and I could hear the clangs of swords in the yard and the clunks of weights in the lifting room. I eased my head back against the wall, crossed my arms, and closed my eyes, lulled by the sounds. I wasn’t tired, exactly. I’d slept deeply the night before. But a weariness from my payment to Morven, cold iron burns, and use of my rock armor still lingered.
“Looking for me, Petra?” asked a smooth voice right next to me.