3
Jase
That asshole grabbed me when I went to shake his hand, eager to salvage this deal. I was only a few hundred thousand short of my goal. Then I could retire and spend my time looking after my half-sister’s best interests. Molly was only ten, and all she had was our mother and her father. Mom was a former Miss Sugar Cane and never forgot it. She lived and breathed pageants. She used to travel all over, doing make-up on the circuit. When she ran off with a pageant judge, no one was much surprised. Now the pair of them travel the circuit, Molly in tow as a contestant. Molly’s first pageant took place when she was only four months old. Those two are after the glory. Me, I wanted to make sure the kid is alright. I send money for dresses, plane tickets, and shit to make sure they don’t take any sponsorships from potentially skeevy people who’d want their hands on my baby sister.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I yelled. That’s all I say to him because my brain caught up with my eyes. Oh hell, naw. What kind of new fuckery is this? I could see the building we’re on, only it’s like it’s two separate buildings. I spun around. Fuck. It was like that all over. There was like a line in the air. One bit looked normal. The other looked like I walked onto a dystopian movie set. Crumbling city buildings with weeds broke through the pavement and vines snaked up the outsides. Not only that, but while this building looked like it’s kinda the same one, some of the buildings on the weird side don’t match up with what I knew was out there. Different signage and hell, completely different structures. “Fuck me,” I whispered.
“Later,” he says. His tone made it sound like a promise rather than a joke. Great. Toss in sexual harassment to make this situation so much better. Wish I’d thought of that, I could have harassed him first. Okay, I wouldn’t have, but that’s not the point. And speaking of points, he was smiling again, showing me those scary-ass teeth. “May I be the first to welcome you to Wynter.”
“Winter?”
“Wynter,” he repeated. “It’s the name of this city. It’s one of several cities and towns within Unsidhe territory. We need to hurry, though, and not tarry. This part of the city is abandoned.”
He didn’t elaborate, but he also didn’t make a move until the normal world suddenly winked out, plunging us completely into Weirdsville. I mean Winter or whatever. When that happened, he walked quickly to this world’s version of the door we used to get onto the roof. He yanked it open and motioned for me to follow him. I could’ t simply stay on the roof forever, so I went ahead and followed him. He was in front, so if anything awful happened, it’d be him first.
He held a hand out in front of him, and I could’ t help it. I’m awestruck as an orb of light appeared and floated ahead us, lighting the way forward as it moved. The hallway here smelled dank and insects skittered away from the light. Our footsteps squelched on the wet tile floor. Except for us, the water, and the bugs, there was nothing here.
“Why did you say this place was abandoned?” I asked him.
“I didn’t,” came his reply. “But I don’t mind telling you. They evacuated the area due to a broken ley line. Lower Fae were having their magic go awry due it, and to prevent serious accidents, the Queen ordered the area evacuated until the Board of Magical Energy finish work repairing it.”
I’d heard of ley lines. I’d thought they were just some hippy-dippy shit people who collected crystals and didn’t use deodorant believed. “Okay. So, how long does something like that take?”
“A break this big?” he mused, coming to a stop before a door at the end of the hall. He opened it and waited for the light to go ahead before going through it. “About six to eight weeks. The lines cut through all of the realms, so it’s a pretty big operation. Have to have engineers on each side of the rip in all of the realms. The permit from the Sidhe Court finally came through last week, according to ANR. Now we’re just waiting on Valhalla to agree.”
ANR? Valhalla?
“Okay, I’m lost,” I admitted. “What is ANR? And Valhalla, do you mean like the actual Valhalla? As in Asgard and all that malarkey?”
He snorted, stepping around a chair. Huh. Unlike back to what I was now thinking of as home, this was not a night club. It looked like some sort of spa or hairdresser or something. We came to another door, this one leading to the main hallway. There wasn’t an elevator in this building. Instead, there was a balcony. Just a balcony, with a rail. Did these guys pop out wings or something? I fought the urge to laugh, memories of the Tinkerbell balloons springing to mind.
He turned to face me. “Okay, I need you to put a hand on my shoulder and hold on.”
No way. Nope. Nuh-uh. The last time he and I touched, he did a little hop and took me to some kind of never-never land. If he was going to jump again, this time off a balcony, where the hell would we end up then? A circle of Hell? Or maybe he’d leave me to go splat on one of the floors below. Nah, probably not. He still thought he’d get me to kill a bunch more people for him, for a steeply discounted price, as part of some damned so-called fairy bargain. But he might try scaring me with hell first.
“Look, I don’t have time to argue with you,” he said, leaning his head against mine while staring deeply into my eyes.
I widened my eyes in surprise, staring right back for a split second too long before recalling exactly why that was a bad idea. An intense cold swept over me, and once again, I couldn’t move. This time, I didn’t fall over, though.
“I can’t believe I had to do that again,” he muttered, grabbing my hand and turning away. To my surprise, he didn’t jump, dragging me with him. Instead, the world about us shivered. One moment, we were on the balcony. The next, we were on the ground floor. Now, if he had explained that was how we were to get down, I’d probably not have resisted. Okay, that was a lie. Despite all the weird shit going down, I probably would have thought he was lying. He hadn’t exactly proven himself to be trustworthy thus far.
“You still with me?” he asked, snapping his elegant fingers in front of my face.
“Yeah,” I managed to answer through a thick tongue and frozen, rubbery lips.
“Good. Try to keep up,” he said, still holding my hand. A piece of balcony railing landed next to us with a sudden cracking noise. “Well, damn. Now even High Fae magics are having unexpected effects. Come on, we’d best go. I’ve wished for a Flyt, but they won’t collect us any closer than Beetle Avenue.”
A flight? Wait, why did we need transport? Not that I could ask him, my mouth could barely make sense with a simple ‘yeah’.
I ambled along, managing to keep up with him. We passed grim looking buildings, the brickwork old, the glass milky. Just how long had they been waiting for those permits? It looked like decades have passed. As we walked, he answered my earlier questions. “ANR is Avalon News Reports. It covers all fae related news for both Courts as well as major events in the other realms. And yes, I meant Valhalla as in the place with Valkyries. I try to stay away from them, they tend to take a dim view of Court politics and have no respect whatsoever for our rules.”
He kept mentioning these rules. It sounded as if they were akin to being actual laws, though ones that were magically binding. I needed to learn what all of these were and how to use them to my advantage, and fast.
