Gia opened the top drawer of her opulent desk and removed a black ledger. She thumbed through the pages until she found what she’d been searching for and held the book out to me, waiting patiently until I took it from her steady hand.
“The left page is Miss Rain’s debts.”
Though the items listed were written in Chinese, the numeric value of the debts was written in standard numerals. The numbers were large, and they took up the full left-hand page. The tally at the bottom was a number over seven figures, which I found staggering.
It had also been crossed out with a red pen and the number zero had been added beside the strikeout. “It shows here her debts were paid.”
“No, my dear. It shows there her debt has been absolved.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One does not simply pay debts here. Favors are exchanged, services rendered. These things are often done with promises of great wealth or treasures.”
“Kellen had the money to pay for this.” I pointed to the massive number. “Even if she didn’t, her family would have. Why are you making it sound as if she couldn’t live up to her end of the bargain?” A cold chill had set up shop at the base of my spine and was steadily fanning out through my body. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
I’d never had to deal with the mob or debt collectors—not the kind who broke limbs instead of taking away your television, anyway. My experience was only in movies, and the way Gia was saying Kellen’s debt was absolved sounded a hell of a lot like a euphemism for sleeps with the fishes to me. But killing Kellen would be senseless. She was loaded, and to the Rain family the amount she owed would barely be a drop in the bucket. It might make Lucas mad to pay it, but it certainly wouldn’t ruin them.
“She promised something other than money,” Gia said. “And she couldn’t deliver.”
“What did she promise?” Holden asked before I had the chance.
“She promised herself. Kellen fell in with a fairy named Brokk who trades in pure happiness. But happiness like that comes at a cost, and Brokk has his requests. The time came where she had to fulfill, whether she liked it or not.”
I went rigid in my seat, and Gia’s gaze shifted from Holden to me. She smiled again, and this time I didn’t feel any of the friendliness or warmth she’d previously forced into the gesture. Now it was just as cold and empty as the people who frequented her club.
“Who is the fairy she owes a debt to?” My voice squeaked as I spoke.
“A member of the court of the fairy king.”
I knew enough about the high fae to know this was no laughing matter. If werewolf royalty was archaic and a pain in the ass, fae royalty was on a whole other planet of absurdity.
A literal other realm.
“She made a promise to a fae?”
Holden cursed behind me, and Desmond said nothing. It was possible Desmond didn’t understand how bad it was to owe something to a fae. You couldn’t even thank a fairy without them thinking it meant you were in the red with them. Kellen couldn’t have known the implications of her actions.
“She didn’t know,” I told Gia. “There was no way she would promise herself to a fairy if she really understood.”
“The girl came to our club, and she came often.” Gia tapped the ledger as if I was supposed to understand the story the Chinese scrawl was telling me. “She made her bed. And now she will lie in it. Perhaps it will not be so bad for her. He does specialize in happiness after all. Maybe you should let her be.”
“Where is she?” I demanded, rising to my feet and slamming the ledger down on Gia’s desk.
The small woman raised her wrinkled face to me, and the smile was gone. “She is beyond the gate. Your friend has been taken by the fairies, child. You will never see her again.”
Outside the air had a chill to it, reminding me spring was not always willing to easily yield to summer. I beat both men to the car and was pacing in front of it while I waited for them to show up. Leave it to Kellen to fall into debt with the fae and be spirited away by the fucking fairies.
“What does she mean taken by the fairies?” Desmond asked when he reached me. “Is that a code for something?”
I shook my head. “Remember when I took you to the Oracle?”
He nodded.
“We were beyond the gate then.”
“Technically,” Holden interrupted as he came to the driver’s door, “you were inside the gate. Calliope’s mansion is the gatehouse. It’s a way to get to and from the realms. Your friend’s sister is on the other side of the Oracle.”
Desmond didn’t say anything, though Holden had dropped a lot of knowledge with one little speech. “If we want to find her,” the vampire continued, “the Oracle is our only hope.”
I stiffened. Normally I’d be the first one to say, We’re off to see the Oracle, but right now I was pretty sure Calliope was killing humans. Not a hundred percent sure, but not convinced of her innocence either. I couldn’t exactly waltz into her home and ask for a favor when I was half certain she was a murderer.
She’d know.
But Holden was right. If we were going to find Kellen, and Kellen was with the fairies, Calliope was our one slim shot in hell of getting to her. I cursed loudly and kicked the car tire. “I don’t like this,” I hissed. “How the hell did she get herself in this kind of trouble? Goddammit.”
Holden frowned at me. “Honestly, love, there’s no need to take it out on the car.”
Bracing my hands on the roof of the car, I glared at him. “Would you prefer I take it out on you?”
The vampire clucked his tongue at me and started to say something else, but Desmond interrupted. “Maybe, before we let this tension get too far, we should go see the Oracle. Okay?”
I didn’t like it, but what was to like?
If I wanted to bring Kellen home, I needed Calliope’s help.
After a brief stop at home to collect my katana, some spare bullet clips and a few assorted weapons, we made our way to Calliope’s. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the fae world, but I didn’t think I wanted to go in without protection.
Not so long ago the sight of the Starbucks down the block from my house came as a relief to me. It was my safe place, a refuge from the insanity of the world around me. I used to come for advice, for blood, or to see someone I thought was my friend.
But if my friend was a murderer…
I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. For the first time since mentally accusing Calliope of Petey the Pizza Boy’s death, I had to ask myself why it mattered that Calliope might have killed him.
I worked daily with vampires, people who had been alive long before they started to obey the rules of the council. Sig and Juan Carlos had been killers in their human lives. I was kidding myself if I didn’t think Holden had killed anyone. Even Keaty was a killer for a living.
And what about me?
What a hypocrite I was for getting up on my high horse and looking down on someone else for being a killer, when it was all I’d done with my own life since I was sixteen. Until I had real answers, I couldn’t start judging anyone based on their murderous habits.
It only felt different because it was a teenage boy. And because I thought Calliope was above that sort of thing.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”
Holden could go through the gate on his own, but Desmond was another story. Desmond was technically extra forbidden in Calliope’s realm. First, because he was a werewolf, and shifters were notoriously unstable in fae realms, and second, because the Oracle had outright forbidden me from ever bringing him back.
But he was staying with me until we got to the bottom of the whole Kellen situation. I was worried if I let Desmond out of my sight for even a moment, Lucas would manage to make him disappear. God knows what would happen if I went into a fairy realm. I might come back out and find Desmond was long gone and there was no easy way for me to get him home again.
So the wolf was staying with me until I brought Kellen home.
I took Desmond’s hand and held tight as we approached the entrance to the coffee shop. The gate to Calliope’s realm was designed to allow through only those in need of her aid. I was pretty damned sure we qualified, but whenever I came to the passage with anyone else, I had the nagging worry it wouldn’t let me through.
Don’t let today be that day, I thought.
Holden passed through first, and instead of stepping into the foyer of the Starbucks, he vanished. One down, two to go.
“Don’t let go,” I instructed.
Desmond said nothing but squeezed my hand firmly. I approached the door and pulled us both through. Normally a faint tingling sensation was all that accompanied my transition through the pass. Stepping in this time felt like entering a vacuum, which was the first sign something wasn’t right. Desmond’s hand tightened on mine so fiercely my bones felt like they were grinding against each other. I tried to call out in protest, but the air was sucked from my lungs, leaving me gasping.
When I looked at Desmond, his face was pale, and he was clutching the front of his shirt. He couldn’t breathe either. I kept trying to suck in air, but it was about as fruitful as a fish on dry land gasping for water.
Then the cold came, chilling me so suddenly I wondered if we hadn’t been dropped into ice and frozen solid. Shivers racked my body, setting my teeth chattering and covering my skin in goose bumps. Desmond’s hand felt clammy and waxy in my own, like he wasn’t real anymore.
I tugged him onward, not sure anymore if we were actually moving, or if we were going in the right direction. It was obvious we couldn’t stay where we were, though. He resisted. His nails dug in, and in an instant they weren’t human nails anymore. His lupine claws shredded my skin like Kleenex. I didn’t want to let go, but the agony of his claws burned through my wrist like my bones themselves were made of hot coals. I screamed soundlessly and swiped out at him.
It wasn’t until the blood pooled on his forearm that I realized my own hand had transformed.