“This is it?” Jonah asked.
I filled him in on the history. “The tower was built by a family with a manufacturing fortune, and is all that’s left of the house. It reaches into the sky, it’s surrounded by green, and it’s two hundred yards from the lake.”
“Well done, Nancy Drew.”
“I try. The more interesting question is how the parks district doesn’t know there’s a fairy queen living in their tower?”
“Magic, I’d imagine. Although I’m surprised they’d allow their queen to live in a house built by human hands.”
“I had heard they hate humans.”
“And for good reason,” Jonah said. “You know of the changeling myth?”
I did. It was a prominent story in medieval literature, and warned that fairies occasionally stole healthy human children, replacing them with sickly fairy children. Thus, as the story went, any humans born with unusual features were actually fairy children who’d been switched at birth. Humans called the sickly children changelings, and would leave them in the woods in a ploy to win back their human children.
“I do,” I said.
Jonah nodded. “Thing is, it’s not myth. The stories are real—fairy tales in the truest sense of the word. They just got the protagonists wrong. Fairy children were stolen by humans, not the other way around. Sometimes their children were replaced with sickly human children; sometimes they were taken by parents desperate for a child.”
“And because fairies were, at best, myths or, at most, real-life monsters, no one considered such things a kidnapping.”
Jonah nodded. “You got it. Unequal treatment of supernaturals is centuries old. In any event, they probably won’t be glad we’re here. Keep your sword in hand, a finger on the steel at all times. Steel and iron solve the same problem—keeping fairies at bay.”
“I thought the point of this exercise was asking them for help.”
“The point of this e sintI thoughxercise is finding out if they’re to blame. And from Frank’s perspective, it was also probably to get us to piss off the fairies so we incite a war.”
“How is our starting a war with the fairies going to help him?”
“Chicago is the only American city with three vampire Houses. Even New York and L.A. can’t claim that. We are the locus of vampire power in the United States, and Cabot knows it. Cabot House is small. Elitist, and necessarily small. If he minimizes Chicago’s importance—”
“He increases Cabot House’s power proportionally,” I finished. I knew I’d given the little weasel too much credit.
“Precisely. I’d say it’s part of a long-term plan to wrest control of Cabot House for himself. Victor Garcia is the current Master. He’s a good man, a solid leader. He was Cornelius Cabot’s right-hand man, which irked Franklin to no end. Franklin was just a cousin from some far-off branch of the family tree, but he thought he had a right to the House. That it was his birthright.”
“And Cornelius disagreed?”
“I’ve heard the old man thought Franklin was too caught up in human affairs to effectively manage the House. Too concerned with prestige and fast cars and human girls, which didn’t exactly fly for an old school, under the radar, east coast House.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The GP figures he’s ambitious and is willing to play ball, even against another House, so they appointed him receiver for Cadogan House. He figures he comes down here, screws over the Chicago Houses and wins the support of the GP, and that positions him perfectly for a spot at the top.”
“That’s how it plays for me.”
I blew out a breath. So much drama, so little of it actually originating in Cadogan House. Whatever the original goal of the GP and the House system might have been, they were now tools for the narcissistic and the manipulative. Maybe Jonah was right about the Red Guard.
“Won’t they take it as a threat if we come in bearing weapons?”
“Only if we’re lucky,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Lightning flashing around us, we ran toward the tower. The exterior was narrow and crumbling. An open doorway led to a spiral of old stone steps that weren’t in much better shape than the exterior. I took the first step, pausing on the tread to make sure the staircase didn’t crumble beneath us.
“All the way up?”
“Yep. I assume they prefer to live above the human plane.”
He began to pick his way up and around the spiral. I gripped the handrail and started the slow climb behind him. After a few thigh-burning minutes of climbing, we reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
A door led into the tower room. It was huge, made up of long, horizontal strips of wood. Two giant, circular, filigreed hinges connected it to the wall.
“Lovely door,” I said.
“They’re known for their love of beauty,” he said, then glanced at me. “Are you ready for this?”
“I’m working from the assumption it’s going to go horribly wrong. If we get out of here with limbs intact and no aspen slivers in uncomfortable places, we’re calling it a win.”
“Well put.” After a heartening breath, he pulled his han sullhen gld into a fist and rapped on the door.
After a moment, it opened with a grating, metallic sound. A man in black—a fairy of the same dress and build as the ones who guarded the House, stood in the doorway. He asked a question in a quick, guttural language I didn’t understand, but thought might be Gaelic.
“We ask if the queen would deign to see us,” Jonah said.
With a jaundiced eye, the fairy looked us over. “Bloodletters,” he said, the word obviously a slur.
“We are what we are,” Jonah advised. “We make no attempts to hide it. We are here as emissaries of vampires.”
The fairy
s lip curled at the mention of vampires. “Wait,” he said, then closed the door in our faces.
“As if we could do anything else,” Jonah muttered.
“Not up to pushing your way into a fairy enclave tonight?”
“It’s not high on my agenda,” he said. “Not that you couldn’t take them, of course.”
“Of course,” I allowed. Before we could continue the back-and-forth, the door opened again, and the fairy stared out with raven-dark eyes.
Before a second had passed, his katana was at my throat, and a second guard—this one female—was positioned behind Jonah, her katana pointing into his back.
“You are invited into her abode,” the fairy said. “And it would be rude to decline the offer.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY
W
e lifted our hands into the air.
“We can hardly say no to such a sweet invitation,” Jonah dryly said.
The fairy dropped his sword just enough to allow us to pass, while the one behind us poked us in the back like cattle until we maneuvered in the door. Once in the tower, they shut and bolted the door again and took point beside us, katanas at the ready.
I’m not sure what I should have expected to see in a fairy queen’s abode in the top of a tower. Ancient, dreary furnishings encased in a thick carpet of dust and spider silk? A broken mirror? A spinning wheel?
The round room was larger than it should have been given the narrowness of the tower, but it was tidy and decorated with simple hewn wooden furnishings. A canopy bed sat across the room, its round, fluted columns wrapped in flowering vines that perfumed the air with the scents of gardenias and roses. A giant table of rough-hewn, sun-bleached wood sat nearby. There were draperies of cornflower blue silk along the walls, but not a window to be seen.
What I thought was a delicate chandelier hung from the ceiling; on closer reflection, I realized it was a cloud of monarch butterflies. There were no bulbs in the chandelier, but it glowed with a golden, ethereal light.
And katanas weren’t the only weapons in play. As I suddenly heard the echoing sound of a lullaby played on an antique child’s instrument, the pressure in the room changed. A panel of wispy fabric was moved aside on the canopy bed . . . and she emerged.
The fairy queen was pale and voluptuous, with wavy strawberry blond hair that fell past her shoulders. Her eyes were dusky blue, and she was barefoot, vullhes pal dressed in a gauzy, white gown that left nothing of her curvy form to the imagination. A crown of laurel leaves crossed her forehead, and a long, ornate locket of gold rested between her breasts.
She walked toward us with shoulders back and an unmistakably regal bearing. I had the urge to genuflect, but wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Was it appropriate for an enemy of the fairies, for a bloodletter, to bow to their queen?
She stopped a few feet away and I felt the rush of dizziness again. I pushed it back and focused my attention on her face.
She looked us over, and after a moment, raised her hand, palm out. That being their cue, the guards lifted their swords.
“And you are?” she asked, a soft Irish lilt in her voice.
“Jonah,” he said, “of House Grey. And Merit of House Cadogan.”
She linked her hands together in front of her. “It has been many years since we allowed bloodletters to cross our threshold. Perhaps the riddles are not as strong as they once were. The magic not as concealing. The guardians not as careful.” Her eyes darkened dangerously, and I decided I had no interest in crossing Claudia.
“We have need to speak to you, my lady,” Jonah said. “And those who offered the riddle of your location were well rewarded for it.”
For a moment I saw the same avarice, the same lust for gold, in her eyes that I’d seen in the guards.
“Very well, then,” she said. “You are here to discuss contracts? It seems money is all vampires and fae have to speak about these years.”
“We are not,” he said. “We’re here to discuss events of late in the city.”
“Ah, yes,” she said with slow deliberation. She moved across the room to the table, then glanced back over her shoulder at me and Jonah.
She was quite a sight to behold, like a character stripped from a fairy tale painting: the hidden fairy queen, equally ethereal and earthy, gazing back at the mortal with innocent invitation, beckoning him into her woods.
I’d known women who used their sexuality to advantage. Celina, for one, was the type to entice men to do her bidding with overt sensuality. But Claudia ensnared men differently. The sensuality wasn’t a tool; it was a
fact
. She had no reason to
try
to entice you.
You would be enticed
. And if you were, God help you. I couldn’t imagine succumbing to the seductions of the Queen of the Fae, accidentally or not, was a safe course of action.
I looked at Jonah, wondering if he felt the pull. There was general appreciation in his eyes, but when he looked at me, it was clear the gears were still turning. He gave me a nod.
“I have means at my disposal other than seduction, child,” she said in a chiding tone, then took a seat in one of the tall, weathered chairs at the table. “We will speak of many things. But first, you will sit. You will join me for tea.”
I had a moment of panic. Didn’t the myth say you were supposed to avoid any food or drink given to you by a fairy?
“My lady,” Jonah carefully said. “We have need of—”
“
Silence
,” she ordered, the single word carrying enough power to lift the hair at the back of my neck. “We will speak of those things in due time. If you ask a boon, you shall give a boon. Sit at my table, bloodletters. Sit, and {ersf my ne let us speak of pleasantries. It has been many moons since I have shared my hospitality with your kind.”
I wasn’t thrilled about the delay, but I didn’t think the two mean-looking mercenaries at the door would allow a slight.
“We would be honored to join you,” I told her, and her laugh tinkled through the air.
“So she speaks,” Claudia cannily said. “I am glad to know you are more than his guard and protector, child.”
“As am I,” I responded.
As we walked to the table and took seats of our own, a silver platter full of food—crusty loaves of bread, piles of grapes, decanters of wine—appeared in the middle of it. The platter sat on a bed of tossed rose petals in the palest shades of pink and yellow, the colors barely discernable but undeniably there.
I surveyed it suspiciously, and not just because she wanted a snack while the sky was burning around us.
Claudia poured a silver goblet of wine for herself, then did the same for us. “Drink deep,” she said, “for there is no enchantment in my hospitality. Had I permanent need of your company I could most certainly assure it without such lures.”
She raised her dusky eyes to me, and opened the door on the power she’d been holding in. There was a lot of it, and it wasn’t nice. Claudia may have projected elfish sensuality, but the magic beneath the shell was cold, dark, primal, and greedy. Crossing her, I decided, was not a good strategy.
“You are wise,” she said into the silence. I blushed at the intrusion into my thoughts, but held my peace. I was freaked out, however, that she could read minds. That was a trick no one had warned me about—and it certainly hadn’t been mentioned in the
Canon
. There was a siren in Lake Michigan, Tate had some sort of ancient power, and fairies could read minds. Maybe it was the English lit geek in me, but I was reminded of a line from
Hamlet
: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”