The Shattered Dark (13 page)

I drop Sosch as I twist toward my attacker, swinging a fist at…

“Lorn,” I grind out when I recognize the impeccably dressed fae plucking my fist from
the air.

“McKenzie,” Lorn returns with a smile. That smile disappears when an obviously pissed-off
Sosch shoots out of the pillowcase, wraps himself around Lorn’s left leg, then bites
him just above the knee.

“Ahg.
Off!
” Lorn snaps in Fae, kicking out with his leg. Sosch thuds against a grimy door.

“Hey!” I glare at Lorn as I scoop the
kimki
up in my arms. “What are you—”

I stop because we’re not the only people in this alley. A human is leaning against
the wall, smoking a cigarette.

“What’s that?” he asks, eyeing Sosch, as the
kimki
climbs up onto my shoulders.

“Otter,” I mutter.

Lorn laughs. I clench my teeth together, adding Lorn’s name to the list of people
I’m going to kill.

O
NCE THE HUMAN
is out of sight, Lorn breaks into a shop that’s either gone bankrupt and was shut
down or it’s just been purchased and is being renovated. There are dozens of retail
spaces in a similar stage of transition scattered all over the city. In this one,
huge sheets of white plastic cover the glass windows, and the walls are missing Sheetrock.
Empty clothing racks are tangled one on top of the other in the back corner, and the
store’s checkout counter is crooked and covered in an even thicker layer of sawdust
than what’s on the floor.

I set Sosch down. He makes a beeline for a stack of collapsed cardboard boxes, leaving
a trail of tiny footprints behind him.

“What are you doing here?” I demand, when Lorn goes to the window. With one finger,
he moves aside the plastic so he can peek out. I haven’t seen Lorn since he fissured
me to Vegas just over two weeks ago. He set me up in the hotel room and hasn’t been
back since.

“I came to see you, of course,” he says, letting the plastic fall back into place.

“You could see me at the suite.”

“I did see you,” he says, scanning the shop. His lips pinch together as if the disorder
and dinginess disgust him. Heaven
forbid he get a smudge on his pristine white shirt. He’s wearing it under a brown
vest, which I think is made from
jaedric
, though it’s not as thick as the
jaedric
in a fae’s armor. The scabbard holding his sword on his left hip is darker than the
vest; so is the messenger-style satchel that’s slung over his shoulder. “I saw you
right before the metal doors locked you inside the…the moving box.”

“Elevator,” I say. He saw me get into the elevator. He must have fissured into the
suite when I was in the hallway; I was just too distracted chasing after Sosch to
notice. “What do you want, Lorn?”

He manages to look offended. “What makes you think I want anything? Maybe I just want
to visit with my favorite shadow-reader.”

I meet his eyes, wait. Everything is a game to Lorn. The problem is, you never know
if you’re competing with him or against him, especially now. He has—
had
—a life-bond with Kelia. Lena and Aren think that’s the only reason he provided them
with supplies and information while they fought against the king, but I’m not so sure
about that. I think Kelia was more of a convenient excuse for him to help them. He’s
more involved with the rebels than he has to be. In fact, after Sethan was killed,
he was the first person to speak up and suggest that making Lena queen wasn’t a bad
idea.

When he doesn’t give up the charade and tell me why he’s really here, I say, “Take
Sosch back to the Realm. It’s not safe for him to be here.”

I make my way back to the door to the alley. It has a window in it. I didn’t realize
it before because it’s covered in such a thick layer of grime. I reach for the handle.

“I need you to shadow-read, McKenzie,” Lorn finally says.

I look over my shoulder. “You came to my world just to ask me that? You could have
found me in the palace.”

“I could have,” he agrees, clasping his hands behind his back as he walks to the checkout
counter. “But Lena and I have had a…disagreement. I’m not welcome in the palace at
the moment.”

That doesn’t surprise me at all. Lorn hasn’t exactly been
forthcoming with information since the rebels took over the capital.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“It’s insignificant,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “How long will it
take you to get to the gate?”

“I haven’t agreed to help you yet,” I say, turning to face him fully. I shouldn’t
even consider it. I already have too many responsibilities: a friend I need to find,
a watch rotation I shouldn’t skip out on, and a job I need to finish applying for.
I don’t have time to shadow-read for Lorn.

“You will.” The corner of his mouth slants up into a smug smile that gets under my
skin.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t help you.”

“Oh, I think you can.” He sounds so pleased with himself that I’m about to turn and
leave just to spite him, but before I do, he adds, “Rumor has it a friend of yours
is missing.”

My blood runs cold. He knows about Paige? How? I only learned she was missing yesterday.

“You know where she is,” I say.

His smile widens. “I’ll give you her location after you shadow-read for me.”

I should have contacted him as soon as I learned Paige was missing. He has resources—spies,
if I want to be accurate—everywhere. He probably knows more about what’s going on
in the Realm than Lena does, but still, I’m not sure if making a deal with him is
the wisest thing to do, not without consulting Aren first.

“Must I remind you that you owe me?” A bolt of blue lightning slashes across his face,
drawing attention to the circles under his eyes. They’re not dark—I didn’t notice
them before the chaos luster—but they don’t belong there. He’s tired, and even though
there isn’t any active tech in this room, I’m sure it’s not the most comfortable place
for a fae. He probably has one hell of a headache.

“I’m aware of that,” I say, staring at the plastic-covered window. Lorn saved my life
in a tavern in Belecha, and he paid for the Vegas suite until Shane took over the
bill a few days ago. The high nobles haven’t allowed Lena access to the palace’s treasury,
and Shane has an extremely large
rainy-day fund because he demanded a ridiculous amount of money from the king for
his services. I hate being in anyone’s debt, so the opportunity to make things even
with Lorn is tempting. Plus, to some degree, I trust him. He acts like he’s concerned
only about information and profit, but he cared about Kelia. Her death and the loss
of the life-bond have affected him more than he lets on.

I study Lorn. No one’s been forthcoming with the details of that bond. As far as I
know, Kelia and Lorn never loved each other. They bonded because they were a good
match, and the connection made their magic stronger. Now that she’s dead…?

I
want
to help Lorn. It’ll probably push my meeting with Jenkins to tomorrow, since I’m
on the watch rotation at the palace later, but he won’t leave the office until 5
P.M.
I’ll have all day to get there.

And I need to find Paige. If Lorn knows where she is, I have to help him.

“Who do you want me to track?” I ask, hoping this isn’t a mistake.

He smiles. “Her name is Aylen. She’s an associate of an associate.”

“What do you want with her?”

“Just to talk,” he says smoothly. “I’ll meet you at the gate, shadow-reader.”

“Wait,” I say, as he opens a fissure. “We only have an agreement if you take Sosch
with you.”

“Sosch?” He stares at the
kimki
, who’s sniffing at an exposed pipe in the wall.

“I can’t keep carrying him through the city.”

“He’s not my
kimki
.”

“He’s not mine, either.”

Lorn raises an eyebrow. “Really? Then why did you chase after him?”

I scowl back. “Just take him with you, Lorn.”

“He’s free to use my fissure if he wants to leave,” he says, opening a slash of light
between him and Sosch.

Sosch glances at Lorn, then returns to sniffing the pipe. I roll my eyes as I walk
to the
kimki
. His fur turns silver when
I pick him up, but by the time I place him in Lorn’s arms, he’s stark white again.
I don’t think he’s too pleased with this arrangement, either.

“Take him with you,” I say again, ignoring Lorn’s overly dramatic sigh.

It takes more than an hour to get to the gate. That’s mainly because I took a detour
to buy a pair of socks and sneakers from Payless. I put them on after scrubbing my
feet in the restroom sink, but they’re still sore and a little black from walking
on the hot concrete.

The bus driver questions me when I ask him to stop. He’s the third driver this week
I’ve had to convince to drop me off here, a good distance off the bus’s actual route.
We’re twenty minutes outside the city, and there’s not a building in sight. That works
for me, though. I hate trying to fissure when humans are around.

After the bus leaves, I step off the road. The ground is all dirt and dead grass.
It crunches under my feet, but a few dozen yards away, the landscape turns green along
the banks of a stream. Lorn is there, sitting with his eyes closed and his back against
a tree. He looks like he has all the time in the world to take a nap. So does Sosch.
The
kimki
’s sunbathing in the blurred atmosphere that marks the gate’s location.

“The idea was for you to take Sosch back to the Realm.”

Lorn cracks open an eye. “Took your time getting here, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want Sosch with us when I shadow-read.”

“He’s perfectly happy where he is,” Lorn says. That’s true. The
kimki
hasn’t so much as budged since I got off the bus.

“He doesn’t belong on Earth.” It’s unlikely a human will stumble across him out here,
but he’s stuck in this world until a fae opens a fissure close enough for him to scurry
into.

“If he doesn’t use my fissure this time, I’ll send someone to pick him up. Here.”
He hands me an Earth-made sketchbook. I wish I had mine with me, but it’s stuffed
inside my suitcase back at my old apartment. This one looks like it belongs to another
shadow-reader. The first half already has
maps drawn in it. At least, I’m assuming they’re maps. I can’t decipher them, so I
have no idea what the lines and scribbles mean. Whoever drew it would know, though.

“Whose is this?” I ask, but as I turn another page, I know. Kelia stares back at me.
Unlike me, Naito can actually draw. He’s made his fae lover look delicate. Her hair
is long and loose, shaded in with the edge of a pencil, and her eyes are soft and
mesmerizing. Somehow, he’s managed to capture her otherness on the page.

I close the sketchbook and hand it back to Lorn. “I don’t feel right using this.”

“You can rip out the pages you use,” he says. “After that, I want you to return it
to Naito.”

“You can return it to him.”

He still doesn’t take it. “I did mention I’ve been banned from the palace, didn’t
I?”

“Lorn…” I fade off, fingering the sketchbook’s worn cover. Naito might appreciate
having it back. It’s actually a pretty sweet gesture.

“He won’t mind,” Lorn says, standing. He pulls at his cuffs to straighten the barely
there wrinkles in his sleeves, then he reaches into his pocket and hands me an anchor-stone.
It’s smooth and the color of snow-white quartz.

“Where will this take us?” I ask. The stone is warm, a sign that it’s been imprinted
with a location.

“Worried I’ll abandon you in the Realm, miles away from a gate?”

“Pretty much. Yes.” I’m not up for another six-hour walk through a forest, and tomorrow
is Friday. I
have
to have my driver’s license and Social Security card turned in to Jenkins by then.

“Fortunately for you, the city we’re traveling to does have a gate.” He dips his hand
into the stream. The water pours between his fingers before it turns into a strip
of white light. He holds out his other hand to me.

“Where, Lorn?” I’m not stepping into the In-Between until I know.

“Nashville,” he relents.

“Tennessee?”

He tilts his head to the side. “Ten of what?”

“Never mind,” I mutter. There’s a gate in Nashville, so I’ll assume that’s where we’re
going.

After I take Lorn’s hand, he adds, “My apologies in advance.”

I stiffen, but he pulls me into the fissure before I have a chance to back out. The
cold air hits me, freezing my breath in my lungs. That’s not unusual, but the sharp
pain in my chest is, and it doesn’t disappear when I stumble out of the light, hitting
the ground hard.

Lorn’s on his knees beside me. Chaos lusters flash erratically over his clenched jaw.
He’s having just as difficult a time trying to breathe as I am, and I realize that
this
is the real reason he didn’t take Sosch to the Realm. It’s difficult for him, working
any magic. If he fissured back and forth between his world and mine, he might not
have had enough energy left to take me through the In-Between.