The dust clogged the fire alarm, and the thing couldn’t tell the difference between dust particles and smoke particles. A siren sounded, screaming like we’d experienced a nuclear blast. Water streamed out from under the door of the unit.
“What the—” the employee said.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Nick asked. The employee ignored him, struggling with the lock at the bottom of the door. I figured a facility as sketchy as this one hadn’t trained her on what to do in case of an emergency. She didn’t know that you left the unit closed because even if she didn’t see or smell a fire, there could be one inside.
She slammed the door up, and a few inches of water tumbled out into the alley between the storage units. The employee swore, dancing through the water, trying not to get wet. “I’ll be right back.”
Disappearing at a run, she headed back to the office.
As soon as she left, I craned my neck to get a better view inside the unit.
“Parker…” Nick said.
“Hey, if it’s in plain view, is admissible in court,” I said. “Right?”
Nick’s lips became a thin line, and he exhaled through his nose but nodded. I moved closer to the doorway.
I’d expected only a few things to have the syrupy sweet feeling of the fae’s Far Realm. Instead, the entire unit felt like opening a door into the Far Realm. Everything from a handmade table to the knickknacks strewn across it felt fae.
Nick grabbed at my arm, but I shook him off, taking long strides into the unit.
It was dim inside, and the sprinkler system was still raining down water, soaking me to the bone. After a moment, my eyes adjusted, and I picked up one of the curios from a long folding table in the back. It was a small gemstone, about the size of my thumbnail, set into a necklace made of gold.
From what I could tell, it looked like it was from the Autumn Court. Whatever its provenance, it was fae.
Beside me, Nick said, “Is that safe to touch?”
It was a fair question. Fae artifacts were notoriously finicky, just as likely to turn someone into a goat as they were to bring any luck. Closing my eyes, I reached out with my senses.
The sprinkler system had petered off, small glugs of water still coming from the sprinkler head. If I pushed magic into everything, I would wake it all at once. That seemed like a dangerous plan, but I didn’t have time to go through each artifact one by one.
We had only a couple of minutes before the storage unit employee returned, and at that point she’d have called her boss or the cops. In other words, we were working on borrowed time. I did my best work on borrowed time.
I pushed a soft layer of magic through the unit, waking everything that I could wake and tasting the things I couldn’t.
The room became disorienting, an explosion of sound and light that made me feel like I was at an arcade on the first day of summer when every child in the city was running around inside screaming. Nick was in front of me, his hands reaching for mine, and I grabbed hold of his forearms, bracing myself on him.
He was the one stable thing I had. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the cacophony in my head. At my silence, his brows drew together.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Can you hear that?”
Nick shook his head and seemed to tilt, but, no,Iwas tilting. I was stumbling like a drunk man on a boat. With his palms braced on my forearms, Nick was a life preserver, the only thing I could count on in the chaos in my head. When I’d woken everything in the unit, it had been with fae magic, which meant I was the only one who could sense it.
Nick could probably feel some of the things, but it looked like he was so concerned with me he wasn’t paying attention. Shaking off the feeling of drunkenness, I opened my senses further and searched for anything dangerous.
All the items on the table were decorative. Some cast automatic glamours on the wearer, giving them sparkling skin or cat eyes. Others had no magic at all, but their base elements were infused with the thick magic of the Far Realm.
I circled the unit, Nick’s hands never leaving me as he guided me around like I was an old man. There was a bookshelf from IKEA that was packed with different curios, including one that projected the image of a world like a hologram. These were children’s toys, and it didn’t surprise me the fae had left them behind.
With a sense of relief, I let my magic fade. Almost everything went dormant, except for a music box, which played a haunting tune. That I might take with me. It didn’t seem dangerous, but there was something about it I wasn’t sure I was comfortable leaving in police hands.
Picking up the box, barely the size of my hand, I tucked it into my bag. I met Nick’s suspicious look and shrugged.
“It’s not dangerous,” I said. Gesturing with one hand, I pointed out a few valuable items I was pretty sure their owners missed. “This is a little more than we thought.”
“You think he’s not just stealing from his clients?” Nick asked.
“I don’t think he would have as many five-star reviews if all of this came from his clients. I think he’s a professional thief with a moving gig side hustle,” I said.
