Authors: Pippa DaCosta
Detective Andrews’s car smelled of mint and toner. I sat in the front passenger seat, hands clasped in my lap, waiting for him to start the engine, pull away from the curb, and take me in for questioning, but he didn’t. He twisted in the driver’s seat and leaned back against the door, studying me.
I arched an eyebrow. “So, you goin’ to slap the cuffs on me, or what?”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” that was good, “that I can find.” Oh. “So, I can’t slap my cuffs on you. Unless you have something to tell me?”
“Like a confession?”
An uneven smile upset his straight face. “I’m not a priest. I’m more interested in where Sovereign is.”
“Why?”
“It’s my job. Speaking of which …” He reached across the center console, opened the glove compartment, and removed a Met Police–stamped folder. As he straightened, his hand brushed my knee and a static shock snapped between us. “Sorry,” he mumbled, fumbling with the folder. “We had a spare one of these at the station.”
I eyed the Fae Survival Pack in his hand with disdain. “What am I supposed to do with that? Hit Reign with it?”
“Well, no, that’d be assault, and I really would have to cuff you. I just thought …” He scratched idly at his chin, hands animated. He had a restless ease about him. Small touches, here and there. Thoughtful, and curious. “Maybe you could do with some advice?”
Was he kidding? His honest hazel eyes and amiable expression held no trace of humor. I sighed and took the pack. I could imagine he’d broken suspects with that look alone. Those eyes made me want to confess my every sin just to appease him. Taking the pack might at least get him on my side. If I played my cards right, he might tell me more about Reign’s indiscretion.
“Miss O’Connor, tell me you’re not following this story.”
“I’m not following this story.”
He pressed his lips together, not impressed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“No, you’re a good cop.” I thumbed through the pack. I’d seen it before. Everyone had. Every year we got one delivered to our homes. You could find them at the post office, at tourist information hubs. Anywhere and everywhere. How best to avoid the fae, and what to do if you messed up and touched one of them, found yourself wanting to touch them. Yeah, I could relate to that.
“Thanks for this, but he’s not bespelled me.”
Yet,
I added silently, placing the pack on my lap. “A fae was killed at Reign’s after-party.”
“It was an accident, but yes, a fae died.”
“An accident.” I repeated, watching his face for any glimmer of deceit. Nothing. He believed it. “Can you tell me what sort of accident?”
“No.”
“How did she die?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Do you know?”
He frowned. “The FA aren’t big on sharing information.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when you came with Miles to question me?”
“Because you’re a reporter,
and
I wouldn’t be a
good cop
if I told members of the public details they didn’t need to know.”
“How do you know they don’t need to know?”
Andrews looked at me, eyebrows up, face tilted away, humor playing in his eyes. “You don’t stop for air, do you?”
I blinked, trying my most genial big-eyes routine on him. “Did Sovereign have something to do with it?”
He moistened his lips, and in doing so, banished the smile. “The Fae Authority is going out of their way to hunt him down, even going so far as asking the Met for assistance. I’ve not been with SO-Thirty long, but apparently the FA never ask for help. If Sovereign wasn’t directly involved, he knows someone who was.” He paused, all traces of humor gone. “He might seem to be charming, Miss O’Connor, but the fae are dangerous.”
“I’m not some love-struck groupie, ya know. I’ve met enough fae victims, willing and unwilling, to not want my fingers burned. I’m a big girl, Detective.”
“Don’t investigate this any further. Let the professionals deal with it. I don’t want to be on shift when the call comes in with your name in it.”
Well, wasn’t everyone so nice just looking out for little ol’ me. First Sovereign tells me to go home, and then one of the Met’s finest warns me off. I placed my hand over my heart and fluttered my lashes. “It’s almost as though you care.”
His soft lips curled. “It’s just … I know how they work. You’re alone in the city, no immediate family, recently made redundant from your place of work.” I winced. “A fae like Sovereign could easily make you disappear.”
Was he talking from his experience as a cop, or had he dealt with fae bespellment firsthand? “I appreciate it, but … No offense, you don’t know me. I can handle Reign.” I waved the pack. “And if not, I’ll hit him with this.”
Andrews sat back in his seat and rested his wrist over the steering wheel. “You expect to see him again then?”
I considered how Reign had wrenched me out of a room full of spiders, and then his less-than-friendly reaction when he’d learned what those spiders had collectively said to me. He seemed suspicious of me, as though I was the untrustworthy one. But, the fact he’d been loitering outside Northcliff House meant he was curious before the spiders attacked. “Maybe. Probably. I think you’re right. He knows something. What happens if the FA catch him?”
Andrews’s lips twisted, as though he’d tasted something bitter. “If he’s involved, they’ll first revoke his roaming rights, if they haven’t already, so he can’t walk freely in public without an FA escort. For someone like Sovereign, it’d ruin his public image, his career.” Andrews averted his gaze, focusing somewhere outside the car. “We suspect they lock up their more deadly suspects, although we don’t know where.” He settled his gaze on me again, this time with a sparkle of intrigue brightening his eyes. “They’re exceptionally secretive people. We’ve tried to find out more, but they’re as tight-lipped about their methods as we are about ours. Whenever we’ve had to call the FA in to collect one of their own, we rarely see their suspect in London again. Either they lock them away or
send
them away.”
Secretive, and yet they thrive on attention. All fae loved the limelight. It was part of their natural appeal, their innate confidence. We liked to turn them into celebrities, even though their dreadful allure was how they bespelled us. Talk about the twisted human psyche.
I didn’t believe Reign was bad, but what did I know? I could call it instinct, or intuition, but I was just as susceptible to the fae as anyone else. Life must have been so much easier without them distracting us. “Do you think they’ve always been here?”
“No.” Andrews replied too quickly to leave any room for doubt. “They don’t belong here. In ’74, when they first revealed their existence here, their numbers were sparse and spread far and wide, but now they group … flock together.”
“You sound like you’ve done your homework.”
His pliable smile brightened his expression. “I’ve had reason to.”
I didn’t point out that people flocked in the same way he’d mentioned. “Safety in numbers?”
“Something like that … But I think it has more to do with how they harvest draíocht.” He swallowed and his smile faded, despite his best efforts to keep it there. “Chancery Lane Station, where you met Sovereign … There are disused deep-level tunnels there. Deeper than the Underground. We’ve seen a sharp increase in fae incidents around that location.”
“What sort of incidents?”
“Squabbles between themselves. High incidences of UB’s: unwilling bespellments. Nothing that raises too many questions when looked at individually, but the overall picture tells a different story. Chancery Lane is a fae hot spot.” Andrews’s eyes sparkled, and I got a glimpse of the real guy behind the steely detective. Clearly this was something he felt strongly about.
“You have a theory?”
“Yeah.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “But I can’t tell you much; it’s confidential. I’ve searched Chancery Lane, gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, and officially there’s nothing there.”
“Nothing?”
He slid a surreptitious glance my way, eager to tell me, but perhaps protocol prevented him from spilling trade secrets to the reporter desperate for a story. “Who am I going to tell? No immediate family? Lost my job?”
His smile hiked to one side. “Nice try.” Facing ahead, he turned the key and started the car. “I’ll take you home. That is where you were going, right?”
“I
was
going to cold-call all the other names on the guest list …” I fluttered my lashes, but his unimpressed expression told me he wasn’t buying it. “Home it is.”
I climbed from Andrews’s car, thanked him, fumbled with my keys, unlocked the communal door to my apartment building and froze. The sensation of being watched skittered down my spine. Andrews’s car rumbled around the corner at the bottom of the street. For a lunch hour, there should have been more people around, shouldn’t there? My hand itched. Taking a breath, I turned, expecting to see someone behind me, but the street was empty. Okay … The spider incident had obviously rattled my nerves.
I turned the key in the lock, stepped inside, strode to the stairs and paused, foot on the first step. I knew without looking who’d slipped in through the door, and that thought scared me more than his stealthy entry. His soft breaths, the gentle rustle of clothing, and I almost imagined I could hear the steady beat of his heart. But that was impossible.
“Reign …”
“Alina.”
I gripped the cool bannister and turned my head. He stood between me and the door, hand in his pocket, eyebrow arched, scandalous smile on his lips. Considering how he’d abandoned me on the sidewalk, he had no right to look so overtly sexy. My human hormones and instincts battled between tasting the forbidden and running for the hills. His gaze dropped to the Fae Survival Pack in my hand. I shook my head and began to climb the stairs.
“Did you have a nice chat with the detective?” he asked, footfalls soft on the stairs behind me.
“Yes, thank you.”
“He thinks I’ve bespelled you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel anything for me?”
“You mean besides the overwhelming desire to slap you? No, not so much.”
“Then you’re not bespelled. You don’t need a propaganda pack to tell you that.”
“What do you want Reign? You’re obviously following me, which is taking creepy to a whole new level.”
“I have better things to do than trail you around London. Mostly I have issues with people following me.”
I noticed he hadn’t actually answered, but I let it slide, for now. “Like the Fae Authority?” I stopped on the landing of the stairs. He stood a few steps down, looking innocent with his wide, beguiling eyes. Did he deliberately turn that look on and off? Like the rest of him, it was damned distracting. “Did you know a fae was killed at your after-party?”
The sweetness and light dashed from his face, chased by shadows. He reached for the railing and gripped it tight enough to whiten his knuckles. “You have to let this go.”
“No, I really don’t. You implied I’m involved. What was it … ?” Clearing my throat, I dropped my voice and tried on my best sexy-fae timbre: ‘This isn’t my story, Alina …’ What does that mean?”
He screwed up his nose. “I most definitely don’t sound like that.”
“Who’s the queen? Why is she being kept a secret?” With a look of frustration on his face, he climbed the few steps between us and reached for me, but I shook him off. “Don’t touch me, Reign. I mean it. So help me God, I’ll hit you with this pack.” I waved the pack in a threatening manner; not an easy thing to do.
He choked off a laugh. Lifting his hands in surrender he stepped down a step. “Okay.”
“It’s not even remotely funny.”
He cleared his throat and coughed into his hand. “No, not funny. You’re quite formidable when brandishing paperwork.”
Narrowing my eyes, I tried to exude pissed-off vibes, but his smile undermined my attempts. I lowered the file. “Just tell me the truth.”
“If it was that easy, I would.”
More vagueness. Evasiveness must have been another of his so-called talents. “I’m not letting this go. You and Andrews can warn me off all you like, but it only makes me more determined.”
He shifted on the spot, drawing in a deep breath. A frown touched his face as he dropped his gaze. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what exactly? My job?”
“You were fired.”
“That’s temporary,” I said, flustered.
“You want the story, is that all?”
“Yes.” His suspicious scowl cut right though my blasé attitude. “To begin with, yes. But there’s more happening here. The fae came out forty years ago, and not once has a queen been mentioned.” I shrugged, “Maybe it’s nothing, but hours after I meet you, I have the cops at my door and spiders talking to me. Talking spiders, Reign.” My raised voice echoed around the stairwell. “That’s not normal. What aren’t the fae telling us? What aren’t you telling me?” He blinked back at me, impossibly innocent. “You know everything, don’t you? And you won’t tell me. Why?”
“Because the truth won’t change anything.”
“Answers like that only make me more determined. We trust the fae. At first, we didn’t, but the Trinity Law changed all that. We
love
the fae, with all your prettiness”—I waved a hand at him—“even though you’re all toxic. We just can’t help ourselves. Reign, there’s more to this, I feel it … Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong, tell me there’s nothing to worry about.” He looked me in the eyes and smiled. I knew it. “This is bigger than me. I can’t walk away.”
His smile slid sideways off his lips. “You really aren’t going to leave this alone, are you?”
I hugged the Fae Survival Pack against my chest and shook my head. “Not on my life.” His sideways glance held a trace of admiration, and something else … Sadness? I wanted to help him. Whatever he was caught up in, whatever had happened, if he was innocent, then I’d do everything I could to help get his story out there. I just wished he’d talk to me. “You can trust me.”
“Trust you?” He huffed a soft laugh and turned away, descending a few steps. “I can’t even trust myself.”