Brightly (Flicker #2) (33 page)

She lowered her hand. “That’s not what I meant. Have you talked to him at all?”

“No. I’m not going to, either.”

“But—”

“I’m just trying to do damage control now, all right? And,” Filo added, sounding more than a little reluctant, “I need you to help me. All I need to know is that you’ll go. I don’t care about the rest.”

“I already said I would,” Lee told him. “I just think you’d actually feel better if you talked to
Henry
instead of me.”

“I can’t.” Filo looked suddenly lost. “You know I can’t.”

As much as she wanted to, Lee didn’t protest. Deep down, she did know, even if she didn’t completely understand. The moment he got uncomfortable, Filo snapped shut like a trap. Pressuring him did more harm than good.

“Filo,” she said, “I remember why we agreed to come here. Believe me, I’m aware. But I don’t hate them for it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“I know. They don’t have
my
name. But if I were in their place, if I could only think of one way to get help for you or Nasser or anyone else I care about, I would do it. That’s probably a terrible thing to say, but I would.” She touched his elbow—once, lightly. “They’re people, Filo. They’re just like us. You don’t have to feel guilty for caring. You don’t have to hate them.”

For a moment, he was silent. Then, in a low voice, he admitted, “I don’t hate them. That’s the problem.”

Lee, Filo and Henry left for Seattle early the next morning. By noon, they’d docked at the marina. The voyage had been uncomfortably quiet; Filo and Henry hadn’t spoken much to each other, so Lee tried to fill the gaps in conversation as best she could, with little success. Part of that had to do with Filo’s inevitable seasickness. More of it, she suspected, had to do with the reason Filo had insisted she come along in the first place.

From the marina, they went on foot, with Henry leading them. The farther they walked, the more faeries Lee noticed sprinkled among the crowds, their glamours melted away by the power of her locket: people with tails, with feathers, with animal heads.

Henry led them down a narrow street lined with storefronts, to a shop with a bright red door. The sign hanging in the window had been carefully painted, the ornate scarlet letters proclaiming RUBY’S CURIOSITIES: APOTHECARY, AMULETS AND MORE. Next to it hung a simpler sign. As Lee followed Henry into the shop, she glimpsed the words:
sanctioned by the Seattle Guild.

She recognized the slow, floating sensation of passing over a magical threshold as she passed into the cool dimness of the shop. The door must’ve been warded to discourage normal human patrons from wandering inside.

The shop smelled of herbs and incense. Quiet acoustic music piped from some unseen speakers, giving the place a boutique-like vibe. The tables spread across the floor were covered in a variety of bottles, jars, boxes and pouches, everything neatly organized. A hand-labeled tag was attached to each item.

She noticed a clear glass jar that contained a faintly-glowing liquid the color of burning coals. The tag read
Blood of Salamander
. Nearby, a whole shelf was devoted to bottled animal parts, all of them suspended in cloudy liquid: hoofs, claws, tails, eyeballs. At least, she hoped they had all belonged to animals. Shivering, she turned away from the shelf.

A boy stood behind the counter in the back of the shop, speaking to a middle-aged man. The boy looked about Nasser’s age, maybe nineteen or twenty years old. He was tall and slender, with honey-blond hair and golden eyes—inhuman eyes. Pointed ears peeked through his hair. His features were sharp and fine, the kind that naturally lend themselves to smirking. On his left wrist, he wore a stack of thin leather bracelets.

“That’s my final offer.” The boy had the slightest hint of an accent, one Lee couldn’t place. “You’re not going to find a better price.”

“I could always place an order with the Tinsley brothers,” the man contested.

The boy snorted. “Where’ve you been? Last week, the Tinsley brothers got caught with a supply room full of poached unicorn parts. You don’t want to buy anything from them right now. You’re better off here. Everything’s on the level, Guild-approved.”

For a moment, the man considered. “You’re
sure
you can’t do any better?”

“Any lower and I’m ripping myself off. Take it or leave it.”

“Oh, all right,” the man grumbled, pulling a leather pouch from his pocket. He dropped a number of silver coins into the boy’s hand. The boy counted them quickly, then slid a paper-wrapped package across the counter.

As the man brushed past Lee and out of the shop, she noticed he had short, sharp tusks.

“Henry!” A slow smile spread across the boy’s face when his eyes fell on Henry. His gaze seemed to slip past Lee and Filo entirely, as if they weren’t there. “You look great.”

“Hey, Matt,” Henry said, approaching the counter.

Filo and Lee trailed a step behind him, and the boy’s golden eyes flicked over them for the first time. His smile shrank. “I didn’t realize you’d be bringing… people.”

“Really? I thought I mentioned it in the letter,” Henry said lightly. “This is Filo and Lee. They’ve been staying with us recently. Guys, this is Matt Flanagan.”

Lee smiled automatically and opened her mouth to say hello, but stopped when Matt leaned his elbows on the counter and stared at her and Filo. His gaze reminded Lee of some of the faeries she’d met, the unnerving stillness they could achieve.

“A changeling and an almost-normal walk into a shop,” Matt said, stretching the syllables out. “I think that’s the beginning of a joke. Have you heard that one before?”

Lee’s smile wilted. Beside her, she felt Filo stiffen.

“Don’t look so shocked. It’s obvious,” Matt said to Lee. “You smell like a human, not like magic at all. There’s no way you’re Sighted. And
you
…” When he looked at Filo, Matt’s eyes gleamed and he smiled, baring a hint of teeth. “Oh, I bet all the humans can tell with you. Just look at you. I can imagine the looks you get in crowded places.”

“Matty,” Henry said, taking half a step forward. “Come on. Leave it alone.”

“If that’s what you want.” Slowly, Matt straightened.

Henry cleared his throat. “Are we on for today or not?”

“Of course. Just give me a second.”

Matt walked to the other end of the counter and stuck his head through the door that led to the back room. “Theresa, I’m leaving.”

“You’re still covering my shift tomorrow, right?” came a female voice.

“I already said I would.”

Theresa sighed. “Fine, then. Have fun, I guess.”

Matt chuckled. The sound was strange and soft, like the flapping of an owl’s wings. “I always do.”

With that, he grabbed a messenger bag from behind the counter, slung it over his shoulder and led them outside. Lee noticed Filo glaring at a spot between Matt’s shoulder blades. She touched his arm, but she just shook his head.

“Where are we headed, exactly?” Henry asked.

“Well, we can’t go to any of the Guild libraries,” Matt said. In the sunlight, his eyes were a brilliant molten gold. “You need documentation to get in. But yesterday, I found the records of some books that seem like possible candidates, based on what you described. Luckily for you, there are copies in some of the Guild’s more out-of-the-way locations—one of the places I can actually get you access to.”

“And when you say ‘out-of-the-way,’” Henry said slowly, “you mean…”

Matt grinned wolfishly. “We’re going to the Underground.”

When the three of them continued to look at him blankly, he knit his brow. “You’ve never heard about the Seattle Underground?”

“Afraid not,” Lee said.

“Tourists,” Matt muttered, shaking his head. “In 1889, the Great Seattle Fire destroyed over thirty blocks of the city. This was bad for obvious reasons, but it also created certain opportunities. Seattle was originally built at sea level, on the tide flats. It flooded constantly and the sewer system backed up during high tide. It was disgusting. Since they pretty much had to start over after the fire, everyone thought they might as well fix those problems. They built retaining walls on either side of the old streets, filled the spaces between the walls with dirt brought in from the hills and then paved over everything. That raised the streets out of the mud, between eight and thirty feet above the old sidewalks that still ran alongside them.

“Property owners were eager to get back to business, so many quickly rebuilt on the ground level, where they’d been before the fire. They knew they’d eventually have to move up one or two floors, but for years, business thrived down below, especially during the Klondike Gold Rush.

“At first, people had to climb ladders to go from the raised street level to the original sidewalks, where the building entrances were. When the city finally built sidewalks above the old ones that ran alongside the elevated streets, it created tunnels between the two levels. Most people moved their businesses upstairs, but some operated from the ground-level and used those old sidewalks. The Underground stayed open until 1907, when it got wrecked by the plague.”

Lee blinked. “What plague?”

“The bubonic one. There was an outbreak, everybody panicked and the city condemned the Underground. Everything was sealed off and the buildings became basements, but that didn’t stop people from using the Underground for all sorts of interesting stuff. Gambling halls. Opium dens. Speakeasies. The first Seattle Guildhall.”

“They operated out of abandoned, plague-ridden tunnels?” Filo asked with a scoff.

Matt shot Filo a dark look. “It was supposed to be temporary. When the Guild first came to Seattle, they only planned to use the Underground for a short time, while they scouted for another place for the actual Guildhall. But it turned out to be a decent meeting place. With wards that kept it hidden, there was practically no risk of discovery. It was quiet. Secure. Over the years, people forgot about the Underground. It turned into a rumor that nobody really believed, until some human rediscovered it. They started offering tours in the seventies.”

“They do
tours
of the place?” Lee asked.

“Only a few blocks of it. Most of the Underground is still condemned, and the Guild’s section is still warded. Nobody’s going to stumble across it. A lot of their setup is still there, just as it was. Mostly, they use it for storage—old equipment and musty old books that nobody reads, like the ones you’re looking for. And to get there, we need to head to Pioneer Square.”

“I can’t believe you’re making us take the tour,” Henry whispered as the crowd of sightseers descended into the Underground, led by a tour guide. “You probably have ten ways to get down there that don’t involve walking around in a big, loud group.”

“Only
part
of the tour,” Matt said. “We’ll skip out soon enough. I just thought you would enjoy it. I remember how much you liked the museum.”

“We’re not here for that and you know it,” Henry muttered, sounding more weary than irritated.

A few minutes ago, Matt had unsuccessfully attempted to pay for Henry’s ticket. Matt had clearly planned some sort of wooing before he realized that Henry was bringing company; Lee hoped fervently that he would scratch the rest of his plans. She kept trying to catch Filo’s eye, silently asking what he made of all this, but he avoided her gaze.

Though electric lights were strung through the passages, the shadows were thick. Some light from the street filtered through dusty, amethyst-colored skylights that the tour guide said had illuminated the original sidewalks when they were still in use. Weeds clung to the dirt-caked bricks along the edges of the skylights, grasping hopelessly toward clean air and sunlight.

They passed wooden wall frames that resembled exposed bones and picked their way around piles of rubble: bricks, lumber, oversized gears covered in rust and swathed in cobwebs. Dusty pipes ran along the walls like veins, tracing complicated paths. Lee spotted broken signs from long-forgotten store fronts, the paint badly flaked and faded.

“Time to go,” Matt whispered finally, pulling three of the thin leather bands from his wrist and handing one to each of them.

The moment she touched the leather, Lee felt a cold tingle seep into her fingers. She flashed Filo a skeptical glance, but he only shrugged and put on the bracelet. She did the same.

When she slid the bracelet on, the sensation spread rapidly up her arm, through her chest and down the rest of her limbs. Her body felt abnormally light, almost weightless. It wasn’t a
bad
feeling, not exactly, but it was unsettling, like fog sliding over her skin.

Matt led them away from the tour group and through a crumbling hole in a nearby brick wall. On the other side was a narrow, dark passage. To compensate for the lack of electric lights, Matt reached into his messenger bag and withdrew a clear glass orb about the size of an orange. He held the orb gingerly with his fingertips, and it flared with golden-white light. When he released the orb, it didn’t fall. Instead, it floated at chest-level, drifting beside him.