“Doesn’t Fae magic cancel out all other magics?” Beth asked her.
“Yes, but it’s not that simple. The magic isn’t just clinging to Jordan. It’s attached to her. My power might not be able to tell the difference and…”
“And no more Auntie Jordan,” I finished for her. Then I realized what else she’d said. “What do you mean it’s attached to me? Orias never mentioned that.”
Sara motioned for me to follow her to the kitchen. She picked up her fork and ate a mouthful of spaghetti before she answered me.
“Sorry. I’m always hungry these days.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Fae power is a lot stronger than warlock magic, and it’s very sensitive to demons. I’m able to see the magic around you more clearly than Orias can, now that I’m looking for it.”
“Lovely.” I hopped up to sit on the granite countertop a safe distance from Sara. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted to start off my visit with you guys. I can’t even go near you.”
“I’m sure it’ll be gone soon. Orias might not be as strong as I am, but he really knows his stuff.” Sara spoke through another bite of spaghetti. “The main thing is you’re here.”
Beth grabbed three bottles of water from the fridge and handed me one. “We want to hear all about what’s going on in Los Angeles. Reading reports is not nearly as good as a firsthand account. I still can’t believe you actually witnessed someone opening the barrier. What was it like?”
“It was…surreal. And scary.” In more ways than one.
Sara drank from her water bottle. “Tell us everything.”
I took a deep breath and launched into the story about the events in the gym, adding every detail I could remember. When I got to the part about Hamid tackling me, the girls oohed and aahed in delight. I made sure to leave out any mention of his strange behavior and the fact that he and I had bonded.
Beth made a silly swooning sound. “He rushed in to save you.”
“I didn’t need saving,” I grumbled. “I was doing fine on my own until he decided to go all alpha male on me.”
“Alpha male, huh?” Sara said with a sly little grin. “I’ve never seen Hamid in action, but I do remember thinking he was a little scary the first time I saw him. And I believe you said he was perfect.”
I made a face. “Don’t remind me.”
“What happened next?” Beth asked.
“Not much,” I lied. “I had a bit of a headache from the magic, so Raoul sent me back to the house to see the healers. I planned to return to the school, but Caleb asked me to go on a job with him.”
Sara eyed me curiously. “Since when do you pass up something like that to go out on a routine job?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Raoul told me they would just be keeping the place secure until the other Council teams arrived. There was nothing for me to do there, and you know I hate sitting around doing nothing.”
“True.” She laid down her fork with a contented sigh.
I shook my head at her now empty plate. “Is there even enough room in your stomach for all that food?”
Sara laughed. “You know how fast our metabolism is. It’s double that when you’re pregnant. And when you’re growing a Fae baby, it’s double that again.”
My eyes rounded. “Damn.”
She took her plate to the sink to rinse it. “Eldeorin and Aine said Fae pregnancies don’t usually make the mothers this hungry, but I’m half Mohiri so that changes things.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “And what’s with the glowing thing you were doing when I got here? It kind of reminded me of when you used to glow before you went into liannan.”
“Oh, that. She can feel whenever I get happy or excited, and she reacts the only way she knows how,” Sara said, motioning for us to go to the living room.
“Is that normal?” I sat on one of the leather armchairs, and Beth took another.
Sara sat on one end of a couch with her feet up. “Yes. And Eldeorin said as far as he can tell, she’s healthy and happy.”
I tapped the arm of the chair with my fingers. “As far as he can tell? He’s their best healer, right? Shouldn’t he be able to see everything that’s going on in there?”
Sara laid a hand over her belly again, something she seemed to do a lot. “You remember when Eldeorin put me in the deep sleep to help my body adjust to liannan? He said I put a wall around my Mori to protect it from my Fae power. Well, this little one takes after her mama. She seems to be protecting her Mori from my power and Eldeorin’s. I can feel her there, but I can’t see her and neither can any other Fae.”
“Wow.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said a male voice I knew well. I looked up to see Nikolas enter the room.
He smiled at me and went directly to Sara, leaning down to kiss her lightly on the lips. Then he lifted her legs and sat beside her with her feet on his lap. I’d seen him be affectionate with Sara plenty of times, but there was a new gentleness to his actions that hadn’t been there before.
“Glad you could visit us,” Nikolas said to me as he rubbed Sara’s feet.
“Me, too.” I stared at him. “How is the baby not zapping you?”
“Are you kidding?” Laughing, Sara took Nikolas’s hand and placed it on her belly. “She absolutely adores her daddy.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to die from cuteness overload around you guys.”
Nikolas arched his eyebrows at me, but I noticed he didn’t remove his hand. He was so busted.
“How long will you be in Chicago?” he asked me.
“Trying to get rid of me already?”
He smiled. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Although, I’m surprised you chose now to visit with all that’s going on back in Los Angeles.”
I scoffed. “That city is practically swarming with Council investigators now, and you know they aren’t going to let me anywhere near this one. They want me to stand on the sidelines like a good little girl. No thanks.”
It was all true. I just left out the part about me bonding with the most infuriating warrior alive and then breaking the bond. Small details that they didn’t need to know. Ever.
“Well, we have plenty for you to do here,” he said. “You can take a few days to visit before you start.”
“God, no.” I made a face. “Put me to work, please.”
The last thing I wanted was to hang around here doing nothing. I needed to be busy doing stuff that would occupy my mind and keep me from thinking about things I’d rather forget. Apparently, declaring your intention to break a bond didn’t wipe all thoughts of the other person from your mind, an important fact that had been left out when I’d been taught about bonding.
Nikolas let out a deep chuckle. “Okay. You can start patrols tomorrow.”
* * *
“So, this is a wrakk,” Beth said a week later, as she and I walked toward a seemingly deserted red brick building. There were a handful of vehicles parked outside, and the only sounds came from the planes taking off and landing at the nearby airport.
“It doesn’t look like much, but wait’ll you see the inside.” I smiled, remembering my first visit to a demon marketplace in San Francisco. I’d gone there with Chris on my first job, and we’d ended up in a standoff with eight Gulaks until Sara had shown up to even the odds. Good times.
Today’s visit was not official business, however. We were here as a favor to Sara, who had been asked to help find a runaway teenage Mox demon from Detroit who had been spotted here. Sara couldn’t come to the wrakk with her power acting up, so she’d asked us to come in her place.
I opened the door and entered the quiet building. Two steps inside the door, it was like someone had flipped a switch to turn on the sound, and I knew I’d passed through the demon wards that protected the building. The wards were meant to keep out non-demons, and they also muted all sounds from the place.
We walked down a short entranceway and into the wide marketplace area that was a maze of tiny shops and booths, selling everything from produce to clothes to medicines and housewares.
Some of the shops we passed had skewers of meat you couldn’t have paid me enough to try. I was adventurous, but demons had a very different palate. I’d probably spew if I found out I was eating Lamprey, which some demons considered a delicacy.
The wrakk was alive with activity. Vendors called out their wares as demons of every shape and size walked by. Adults mingled and shopped while trying to keep an eye on the children running about.
Beth and I got more than a few curious stares as we made our way through the place because Mohiri didn’t normally frequent wrakks.
A few years ago, those stares would have been wary, even hostile, but that was before we had started building relationships with the demon community, thanks to Sara. It amazed me how far we’d come in three years, and the changes had proven beneficial to us and the other demons. We’d gained a ton of new allies and informants, and they could come to us when they needed help, like in the case of runaway teenagers.
“This place is a lot bigger than I expected,” Beth said after we’d covered at least half the market. “There are a ton of places a kid could hide in here.”
“Maybe we should ask if anyone has seen her.” I craned my neck to scan the area, and a tiny shop caught my eye. It had colorful fabrics decorating the open front, and racks of clothes were visible from where we stood. At the back of the narrow shop, a female Mox demon knelt on the floor, placing pins in the hem of a long dress worn by another of her kind.
I walked up to the store. “Excuse me.”
The female on the floor stood and brushed off her long blue skirt. “May I help you?” she asked hesitantly.
“I hope so.” I stepped inside the store. “I’m Jordan, and this is Beth.”
The shopkeeper smiled timidly. “I am Terra. Were you looking to buy something?”
I shook my head. “We’re actually looking for a missing Mox teenager, and we heard she might be around here.”
Terra’s brow furrowed, and I could see the suspicion in her eyes. Not that I blamed her. Mox demons were a docile race and were often preyed upon by stronger demons, so they weren’t all that trusting of strangers. Luckily, I’d come prepared for this.
“We’re here on behalf of talael esledur,” I said in a low voice. All I needed was for the whole place to hear me.
My words got the desired reaction. Both Mox females gasped and placed their hands over their hearts, their faces lit with excitement. Talael esledur was the name given to Sara by the demon community after she’d made it her mission to save every demon she met. The good ones, anyway. In demon tongue, it meant “kind warrior,” which was a pretty apt description of Sara.