We stepped inside and I shut the door behind me as Bashur jumped up on Mara and licked her face. “Did he hold his pee and mark ten different things?” she asked.
Elle and I grinned. “Yep.”
Mara rubbed the space between his forehead, and I found myself enjoying our little crew. I could get use to this life. Hunting for crystals was dangerous no doubt, but life was more enjoyable with good friends. And I seemed to have found two of those.
We went into Mara’s office and strapped into the chairs as she did her thing working the dials and knobs at her huge command center to take us to Australia.
* * *
After a spin cycleand a jog down the hallway, we were standing at her back door.
“You might have to do a lot of exploring to find where it is. I’ll set a timer for two hours and send Bashur if you haven’t checked in.” Mara tinkered with her watch and I nodded.
Patting Bash on the head, I stepped out of a small beach condo and breathed in the salty fresh air. The ocean was by far my most favorite place on Earth. Just the vastness of it was so humbling. Faerie was such a small and restricted place since the Dark Times; I’d grown to love the fresh open sea.
“How do you pay for all these places?” I asked in wonder. I knew that a beachfront home was no small purchase.
Mara smiled. “When the Dark Times happened and the Fae fled to Earth with their halfling children, we sent out a small band of loyal Fae to live and earn money on the Earth world. We call them the guardians. They are fully devoted to the cause of finding and returning the crystals and restoring Faerie.” She gestured to the house. “They fund all of our endeavors.”
Whoa. This life just kept unraveling with new shit I had no idea about.
“One of them must be a millionaire,” Elle observed.
“Billionaire.” Mara winked.
Yeesh.So that’s how my mom paid for the fancy apartment in NYC.
I synched my watch. “Alright, two hours.”
She nodded. “Good luck!”
With that, I transformed my motorcycle and hopped on, Elle behind me holding on to my shoulders. I sat there for a full minute, activating my seeker power by thinking of the object of my desire. Pulling up the mental image of the blueish crystal in my mind’s eye, I felt the tiniest tug to the right. Taking off on the bike, I followed the pull and kept my senses open. We sailed past palm trees and white sand beaches as the salty wind whipped around us.
Reaching a fork in the road, I felt a tug to the left, but it was barely noticeable. Faint. I needed to concentrate. Turning left, I went on doing this for half an hour, sometimes stopping at a light for so long I got honked at and had to pull over before I lost the trail. This was a challenging hunt. Finally, when we’d been riding for what seemed like forever, we came upon a beach town called Cabarita Beach and my senses flared. The pulse hit me deep in the gut, yanking me to the left.
“It’s here!” I shouted to Elle, who’d been patiently hanging on to me and not talking so that she wouldn’t disturb me.
I felt her grip on my shoulders tighten in response as she readied herself. I had no idea what we’d be walking into, and that was the hardest thing. Would it be one lone Fae or an entire party of them like last time? Or worse, a trained army? The Sons of Darkness were much more organized than I thought they would be when I’d first learned about them.
I had a vial of the pricklewart juice in my pocket, and since a few days had safely passed, I could use it to be temporarily invisible again. Careening the bike, I pulled us down a little side street and the knock in my gut was so strong I felt a little nauseous. Cutting the bike engine, I stopped. We were close. Elle popped off and then I did as well, packing up the bike until it was a rolling pin once more and stashing it into my messenger bag.
“Okay, give me a minute,” I told my bestie, who stood erect, hands twitching over her weapons as she readied herself for anything. To any passerby she was a normal twenty-something chick in beachwear, but little did the humans know, she was armed to the teeth.
“Is that a gun?” I gasped, eyeing the Glock at her hip. Fae were usually against electronics of all kinds and anything machine or manmade like guns was … not forbidden exactly … but frowned upon.
Elle nodded. “Mara gave it to me, and I have no problem using it.” She tipped her chin high as if to say there would be no more discussion.
Well, I guess you had to fight fire with fire, and we were way out of our league when it came to the Winter King.
I chuckled a little. “You’ve become a little badass, Ellie poo. A far cry from the little Fae who was too scared to jump off Stoneman Cliff.”
She scowled playfully. “Oh fuck you. Stoneman Cliff is high as hell and I was eight years old.”
The memory brought back a smile to my face.
“You have wings. What’s the worst that could have happened?”
She just rolled her eyes and waved me off.
