Grave War (An Alex Craft Novel) Page 3

  I scanned the yard and house in front of me, but nothing seemed out of place. The quiet suburban neighborhood had all the normal sounds of everyday life, and the magic in the air felt the same as it always did. Still, I kept my dagger out as I walked up the drive to the front stoop. There, on the doormat, sat what appeared to be three withered bloodred roses.

  One at the bar, two in the car, and now three at my door. In Faerie, three was a significant number. Something bad was coming. I nudged the roses off the stoop with the toe of my boot, not daring to touch them. I couldn’t see or sense any magic in them, even with my shields open, but Ryese was a sneaky bastard and there had to be a reason he was sending me roses. I seriously doubted it was an apology for his multiple attempts on my life.

  But what the hell was he up to?

  Chapter 3

  No more roses appeared in the night, thank goodness. By the next morning, I was half wondering if I’d overreacted. Not that I planned to let my guard down, but maybe I’d jumped to the conclusion it was Ryese prematurely. Most of the winter court had heard the queen call me Lexi at some point or another. It was entirely possible some courtier thought that was my name and this was some really awkward—and a little creepy—courting attempt. My relationship with Falin wasn’t exactly public, so maybe some other fae was playing secret admirer.

  I’d definitely stay alert, but for now I needed to focus on my first day at the FIB.

  I was waiting by the front door nursing my third cup of coffee by the time a knock filled the small one-room loft. Technically, I didn’t live in the loft anymore—in fact, the entire house was vacant most of the time—but the fact that a folded space with an honest-to-goodness fairy-tale castle tucked inside it had opened up in my landlord’s backyard wasn’t a fact I wanted advertised. Though I guess Caleb wasn’t actually my landlord anymore, seeing as how he lived inside my castle, but the door to the castle connected to his house, so we called it a wash and all enjoyed being castlemates.

  Punctuality wasn’t my strongest skill, and the walk from the castle to the house was a good ten-minute jaunt, so I’d arrived at the house with plenty of time to spare. Which was a good thing, as the knock came ten minutes before I’d been told to expect it. It seemed Agent Nori did not have any punctuality issues. That didn’t surprise me. I opened the door before her hand had time to drop.

  “Morning,” I said, offering a feeble smile held in place only by the copious amounts of caffeine I’d consumed. PC, my Chinese Crested dog who’d promptly curled up on my old bed and fallen back asleep as soon as we’d arrived at the house, now flung himself off the bed and charged the door, barking. He growled, his entire six-pound frame shaking with the sound as he pressed himself against my boots, staring at the fae at the door with his small teeth bared. PC apparently didn’t like Nori much.

  I couldn’t fault his taste, but I did need to create a working relationship with Nori.

  For her part, Nori ignored the small dog. She also didn’t bother returning my smile. Her narrow gaze raked over me, disapproval dripping off her starched outfit. “Didn’t the king issue you a credit card for miscellaneous expenses?” she asked, but didn’t wait for me to confirm before she continued. “You should use it to buy a more professional wardrobe.”

  I stiffened, the already thin smile I’d managed turning brittle, but I resisted glancing down at myself. I knew what I was wearing. I’d picked it out two days ago in preparation for my first day. The black leather pants were an old favorite, and I thought looked rather nice tucked into my equally black boots. I had added a collared red top, as well as a black blazer—which was new, though I’d used my own money, not Falin’s, thank you very much. All in all, I thought I looked pretty sharp.

  Maybe I would let PC bite her; though, my luck, her skin would be poisonous . . .

  “New dress code option for the whole team,” I said, as if I couldn’t care less. I was theoretically the boss, after all. Well, probationary boss. Falin had offered me the position without any trial period, but he had more confidence in my ability to lead the FIB than I did. I wasn’t ready to accept the position as head of the Fae Investigation Bureau for the entire winter court until I was sure I could actually cut it. In the meantime, though, if Falin had an issue with my wardrobe, he could let me know.

  I snagged my purse from the chair, glanced back to make sure the inner door was open so PC could get downstairs to Caleb’s studio, and then stepped around Nori without another word. I wanted to march right down the stairs without a backward glance, but I had to turn to lock up the house. It rather ruined the effect.

  Nori didn’t wait as I locked up, but took the stairs in a clipped but efficient stride. When she reached the bottom, I caught the slight hesitation to her step, as if she was trying to decide if she should stop and wait. She didn’t, but marched around to the drive in the front of the house. Once she’d disappeared from sight, I allowed myself a single sigh. Then I rolled my shoulders back and lifted my chin, lengthening my own stride.

  Today would be interesting. I was entering the FIB at the top. Nori was my second in command, but until I got up to speed with the intricacies of the organization, she was also my guide and teacher. There was a power play going on, and if I wanted to protect the people I cared about, I needed to come out on top.

  I rounded the side of the house, trying to look authoritative. And then stopped. Nori was waiting beside a shiny black sedan. That wasn’t surprising. She’d told me she’d be picking me up in an agency vehicle and the car had the plastic-like look of all fae-favored vehicles—no fae liked to be trapped inside a metal box. No, the surprising part was that she wasn’t alone.

  A man, well, a troll, towered behind her and I had to wonder where he shopped for black suits in his enormous size. More than that, though, I wondered what he was doing here.

  I stopped, eyeing the pair.

  “Craft, this is Tem. He is an agent,” Nori said with a toss of her head to indicate the large troll.

  The troll stepped forward, holding out his hand. “It is nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  Ma’am, huh? Well, at least he wasn’t pulling the cocky power play Nori seemed to be running. Also, it surprised me that he spoke with a thick accent. Something European, his words crisp and shockingly well articulated around the two large tusks protruding from his mouth.

  I plastered a smile on my face and stepped forward to accept his offered handshake. I’d never actually shaken hands with a creature as large as a troll before, and there was an awkward moment of trying to figure out how I was supposed to accomplish the task. His palm engulfed my entire hand, his thick fingers wrapping up my forearm halfway to my elbow. I tried not to grimace as I shook my entire arm in a strange parody of a handshake.

  “Would Tem be a first or a last name?” I asked by way of pleasantries, though in truth I was still wondering what he was doing here. Nori had told me she would be picking me up for my first day—she hadn’t mentioned bringing backup.

  The large troll lifted one shoulder without letting go of my arm. “Little of both, I suppose. It’s the only name I got. Is this your first time shaking hands with a troll? Most folk Sleagh Maith size opt to shake just a finger.” He lifted his other hand and wiggled one very large finger for emphasis. “’Fraid I’ll break their arm, I think.”

  That possibility had crossed my mind, and my teeth gritted behind my smile, but I didn’t jerk my arm away. He released me with a grin that made his scaly yellow lips slide over his tusks, and I wasn’t sure if he was happy I hadn’t flinched away or if he was enjoying making me uncomfortable. Not even off my own property yet and I was already questioning my life choices.

  “And which handshake do you prefer?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips to prevent myself from crossing my arms.

  The troll smiled even broader, showing an impressive number of teeth, which I was surprised to see were rather square and blunt aside fro
m the two large tusks. “Amongst my own kind? Nothing that wouldn’t snap your bones. With the frailer folks like yourself, I don’t much mind either way, but I do like having a boss who isn’t afraid of me.”

  He gave me an approving nod. So, I guessed the handshake was a test. At least I’d apparently passed? It was a good thing troll ears weren’t sharp enough that he could hear my heart hammering in my chest.

  Nori rolled her narrow eyes and opened the driver’s-side door of her black sedan. Small talk was apparently over. I slid into the passenger side, and then lifted an eyebrow when Tem opened the back door. The troll was at least eight feet tall, and while the sedan was bigger than my little convertible, I wasn’t sure how he was going to fold his huge bulk into the backseat.

  Tem had introduced himself free of his glamour, which, now that I thought about it, was odd. Very few fae walked around in the mortal realm without a protective coat of glamour. For starters, glamour helped them blend into humanity more, but it also provided an extra layer of insulation from the metals and technology that didn’t agree with fae physiology. I’d been spending a considerable amount of time in Faerie of late, and few fae glamoured their appearance while there, so it hadn’t immediately struck me as odd. As he ducked into the car, though, his glamour folded around him, shrinking his frame by at least two feet and changing his skin from a leathery yellow to a more human tone. He still didn’t look comfortable cramped in the backseat, but he did fit, which wouldn’t have been true in his unglamoured troll form. Presumably he’d arrived in the car, which meant he’d intentionally dropped his glamour to meet me. Was that a form of respect by showing his true face? Or was it another test, to see if I would spook?

  It was going to be a long day.

  “Tem, this doesn’t seem like your kind of transportation,” I said as Nori reversed out of my driveway. Even glamoured, the troll hunched slightly, and he sat in the middle seat so that his elbows would have room.

  The troll grunted; he might have even shrugged, though it was hard to tell in his current position. “The king wanted to make sure you had some muscle at your back.”

  So, a bodyguard. I should have guessed. Falin had always worked alone when he’d headed the FIB. Considering I was learning the ropes of the organization as well as fae culture, I understood why he’d partnered me with Nori. But a bodyguard as well? So much for his confidence in my ability to do this job. What had I signed myself up for?

  Chapter 4

  So all of these areas belong to winter?” I asked, staring at the map spread out before me. It was roughly similar to world maps I’d seen back in school, but this one was shaded in only four colors, which covered all continents and oceans in amorphous and seemingly haphazard blotches of color. Winter’s territories were icy blue, spring’s pastel pink, summer’s grass green, and fall’s a golden brown. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to where the colors covered, only that there was only one of each seasonal color on each continent.

  There were also discrepancies in landmass shapes from what I’d learned in school, as this map took into account folded spaces. The Organization of Magically Inclined Humans—OMIH, pronounced “oh me” with a groan by most of us—had been trying to produce a map that showed the folded spaces for years but had struggled to chart them. The fact that most folded spaces could only be entered or exited from very particular passageways, and were places between other places, made it extra difficult. Such as Nekros, which was between Georgia and Alabama. Take the one highway that led into Nekros, and it took several hours to drive through the wilds surrounding the city, the city itself, more wilds, and then out into the neighboring state. But, if you instead turned off before reaching the folded space and took the road a mile or two south or north, you could cross from one state to the other, turn and drive over the highway that exited Nekros, and make a full circle around the folded space in about fifteen minutes. I knew that for a fact—Casey and I had done it one summer when we were teenagers. For that reason, most official maps were updated with only the entrances of folded spaces. This map, though, seemed to shimmer and move as my gaze swept over it. When I focused on the entrance to Nekros’s folded space, it unfolded before me, the city named with a small dot floating inside a massive wild space. The Sionan River, which ran through Nekros City but didn’t exist outside the folded space, was clearly delineated on the map. I followed the thin snaking line of the river up until it vanished into a mountain range I’d never seen before, but then the map seemed to blur and I was instead staring at the state line of Georgia. All of Nekros was depicted in icy blue, as was most of the southeast of America.

  “This is as close an approximation of the borders as even magic can track,” Nori said. Her hand flittered over the top of the map, not quite touching the surface as she outlined the edge of the blue area in North America. “The borders waver a bit from day to day, and of course our territory is at its largest right now, seeing as our season currently reigns. At the Spring Equinox, our borders will shrink back a bit, and then become the smallest they ever are after the Summer Solstice.”

  I’d had no idea the borders moved with the seasons, only that the territories changed when the doors moved. Two hours into my first day and I was both fascinated by how much I’d learned and developing a stress headache. Also, I’d just learned that every continent had a territory belonging to winter on it, and oh yeah, me being head of the FIB meant I was head of the whole thing. Each continent had an office and they all reported to me. Not all the fae spoke English either—English was just one of many human languages. They all spoke the common language of the fae, but I didn’t. I was scheduled to be introduced to all the branch heads later in the week. A meeting set up inside Faerie since we all could gather there with ease and be back on our respective continents in the same afternoon. A convenient way to bridge the world for sure, but the language issue? That was going to be a problem.

  I rubbed my temples and stared at the map, watching it shimmer and subtly shift. I’d thought I was taking over as head of an agency that policed Nekros City and the surrounding wilds. I’d never considered how much farther winter spread beyond that, or that winter’s territories would touch other continents. Hell, there was even territory in Antarctica. But just the amount of territory on this continent was daunting. And from what I could tell, there was only one door in each territory.

  “What is this?” I asked, peering closer at a small area in the middle of Florida. Everything around it was blue, but it was colorless. “Is this not part of winter’s territory?”

  Nori leaned down to see what I was pointing at and then frowned. “That’s Disney. The belief magic there is so strong, it reshapes Faerie. No court can hold it.”

  “So there are no fae there?”

  “Oh, there are fae. It truly is one of the most magical places in the human world. There is enough belief magic there to sustain an entire court, but the fae who live there are changed. They become lost princesses and happy dwarves and enchanted beasts. It is . . . terrifying.”

  I smirked, but moved on without further comment. “So what happens to fae living on the borders if the edges are in constant flux?”

  The look Nori gave me suggested even a child would know the answer to that question. As I’d grown up believing I was human, and had only discovered any different a little over half a year ago, I didn’t know the answer. It wasn’t like the fae were all that open about their world or society. They wanted human belief, not human understanding.

  I did know—from painful firsthand experience—that even those independent fae living in the human realm had to pledge to a seasonal court and live inside that season’s territory or they would begin to fade, growing weaker until they eventually died. So were fae near the border nomads? Constantly on the move if the territory shifted?

  The shrill sound of Nori’s wings rubbing together betrayed her annoyance. The wings were currently hidden with glamour, and she couldn�
�t fly this wrapped up in her human disguise, but they still occasionally announced her mood. “Few fae live that far from the door to Faerie—the magic is too thin. Those that do have adapted to the point that they are nearly human. Few fae even venture outside of the folded spaces for extended periods.”

  “Oh.” It made sense. The fae had come out of the mushroom ring seventy-odd years ago because human belief had dwindled to the point that the courts were fading. Their reemergence had set off the Magical Awakening. Nearly a quarter of all humans discovered they were witches, able to manipulate magic. The wilds began emerging. The folded spaces opened. Wyrd magic appeared in families that had never had a hint of magic before. It was not a peaceful time, and many of the magically inclined had resettled into the newly unfolded spaces. I’d grown up in a city founded in one such folded space, and the boarding school I’d been shipped off to when my wyrd power emerged was in another folded space. Nekros boasted higher than the national average of magic users, and for most people, some aspect of magic—be it a charm to keep food fresh, a potion to cure wrinkles, or a bandage enriched with a healing spell—was part of day-to-day life. That wasn’t the case in other parts of the country, and certainly not everywhere in the world. In some countries, practicing magic was strictly forbidden. Looking at the map, I noticed that the cities and countries least tolerant to magic were farthest from the doors.

  “So what is the winter fae population on this continent outside of Nekros?” I asked.

  Nori shrugged. “There are a few wild spaces where fae frequent.” She pointed to various points on the map. “And a scattering of fae inhabit the territory’s major cities for short sabbaticals either by choice or because they are compelled to do so, but the majority are in the folded space closest to the door.”