I’m back in my cottage, pulling on a shirt, when Sage comes through the ferns behind me. “What did Marius say?” she asks.
She’s staying a good distance away, like she’s wary of me. Or maybe she’s just wary of us. Like I am. I don’t turn to her. I don’t think I can take the sight of her sad eyes after having had my hands on her just a few minutes ago. I’ll only want to comfort her again. “Marius and Aelia are going to see if they can get a hint of where the poison was made,” I say, “and I’m going to go threaten people until I find the killer.”
“I want to go threaten people.”
Now I look at her. “Right bloody no.”
“Why not? I can’t just sit here.”
“Did you miss the part where someone was trying to put you in a coma, Sage?”
“Exactly,” she says. “Which means I’m not any safer here than I am out hunting for the guy.” She steps forward, pointing at the door. “I know you don’t want me to feel guilty, but we both know that girl out there would still be alive if it wasn’t for me. Let me at least try to make this better.”
I study her determined features, the flash of life in her eyes, and like a fool I want to kiss her again. I turn away, grumbling curses under my breath as I grab my knife belt. Then I head for the bathroom and say over my shoulder, “Get dressed. We’re leaving as soon as Aelia has a direction.”
FORTY-FOUR
SAGE
I’ve just finished showering and dressing when Faelan calls from outside my cottage. “If you’re coming, Sage, I’m leaving right now. Meet me out front.”
I hurry outside, trailing him to the car.
“Where are we going?” I ask as we pull down the driveway onto the main road.
“Romania,” he says. Because that’s completely normal.
“Like, the country?”
It turns out that the poison was made in Romania of all places. Faelan explains that Marius knows a guy in Bucharest who we can contact. Apparently, he’s the only druid in the area who makes that specific species of poison. When I ask how we’re going to fly to eastern Europe and back in a day, since I’m guessing he doesn’t want me to miss my own Emergence ceremony, he says we’re not flying.
“Swimming takes a lot longer than a day,” I say. “What. Are we teleporting?” Not much more could surprise me at this point.
“In a manner of speaking.”
And there you go.
“It’s a passageway,” he continues. “There are different passages that go different distances. We can’t use the one at the Cottages because it doesn’t have enough juice. It only works for local spots.”
Of course there’s a teleportation thingy back at the Cottages. “Where is there a passageway, or whatever, at the house?”
He glances sideways at me. “The backyard. The waterfall. You watched Marius come through.”
I decide I’m not going to fully comprehend half this stuff, and go back to why we’re looking for one of these passages in the first place. “So what’re you planning on doing once you find this druid who made the poison?” I ask.
“Convince him it’s in his best interest to tell me who bought it from him.”
“What makes you think he’ll tell you anything if it’ll get him in trouble?”
“I’ll persuade him.” I can tell by his tone he’s planning on doing it through pain, and at this point I’m pretty okay with that.
I can’t think why any of these Otherborn would want to poison me. They all seem more interested in showering me with ridiculous gifts than hurting me—well, except for the whole Kieran-slicing-my-neck-open thing. Which was apparently a mistake? This place is all upside down, so who can tell.
“Could this druid be the one who wants to hurt me?” I ask. That seems too easy, though.
“A druid rarely does anything so huge—especially something like attacking a high-ranking demi—without backing. The Cast would make sure his head rolled without blinking. He probably wouldn’t even get a trial. Having the backing of a House covers his actions. The reality is, there are probably layers and layers of messengers involved. We may not find the killer before the Emergence. But we need to try.”
We leave Malibu and drive through the Valley. Finally we’re pulling off the highway and heading down a frontage road. When we turn onto the next street, I have to do a double take to be sure I’m seeing right. “Are you taking me to a graveyard, Faelan?”
“There’s a passage here and I know it works. I used it to take you to Lailoken the night Kieran killed you.”
“It’s in a graveyard?”
“Yes.” He gives me a tired look, apparently not up for all my newbie questions.
I just shake my head.
He parks on top of a rise, farther back in the cemetery, and gets out, pointing at a crypt in the distance. “It’s right there.”
I follow him along the headstones toward an overgrown part of the graveyard. Large hydrangeas crowd around a fence with weeds poking through, and up ahead is an old stone structure with a broken metal gate.
“So the demigods use cemeteries as public transportation. Huh.” This isn’t something I would’ve guessed in a million years.
“A majority of the time we use average human transport, since gateway travel can be depleting, but . . . well, yeah.”
“Did this dead person give you permission to use their resting place as a subway station?”
“It’s an old gate, so the family’s—” He stops abruptly.
“What’s wro—”
He covers my mouth with his hand and puts a finger to his lips. He points at a dark spot a few yards ahead, just outside the crypt, like a puddle in the weeds. A black oily puddle.
A wraith.
I stumble back and turn to run.
Faelan tries to grab me. “Wait. Don’t!”
Black smoke fills the air three feet in front of me, shifting and forming into a man. Faelan yanks me back as Kieran takes shape.
A hiss and a slurp come from the ground behind us, the wraith emerging, growing, its shadow falling over us as it rises from the ground, floating in a dripping mass.
Hundreds of birds burst from the surrounding trees, taking flight in a cacophony of screeches. They swarm in a mass, swooping up, then turning. At first I think Kieran is sending them out, but then I remember the birds coming after me in Faelan’s cottage that first day. And when I glance at my protector, his features are pinched in focus.
The birds come around in a dark cloud, heading straight for us. I duck as the shrieking mass dives in a sharp slice at the air.
And cuts right through Kieran.
He bursts into black smoke again, the birds flying out in a chaotic disarray.
Kieran re-forms, a bored look on his face. “Let’s not play this game, bastard.”
“What do you want?” Faelan growls. The birds turn in a wide swooping movement and splat right into the wraith. The oozing creature screeches in rage, breaking apart. Several birds flop to the ground, dead, but the wraith is gone. “Tell your creatures to stand down,” he says.