Hidden Dragons (4 page)

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” his mom promised.

Cass blew a kiss as the doors shut her off from them.

Alone once more, she felt the silence of the store beneath her. It was half past nine, and shopping hours were over. Her fae senses picked out a security guard patrolling menswear two floors below—a reformed demon, if she read his energy correctly. Cass hadn’t adjusted to the sharpness of her perceptions since she’d returned. Her skin prickled with aliveness, too sensitive for comfort. Compared to this, she’d been wrapped in cotton batting for two decades.

Poly yowled for her to come back to the apartment.

Cass did so and locked up.

“You and me, cat,” she said.

She fought an urge to check her old treasure drawer. She’d kept it here to avoid her mom’s snooping. Was Rick’s candy bar still there? Surely wondering was silly.

“Twenty-two years,” she said to Poly. More than time to get over a teenage crush.

She turned instead to Gran’s study, where Patricia Maycee had stored her geological specimens in lighted cabinets. Collecting them had been a lifelong hobby. Larger rocks were displayed on antique tables, getting dusty in her absence. The stones weren’t magical, just pretty or interesting. When she was little, Cass had loved playing with them. As she opened one of the creaky glass fronts to revisit that pleasure, Poly hopped onto the couch and curled up.

A shiny tumbled sodalite drew Cass’s fingers to stroke it. Hadn’t Gran owned a selection of polished eggs? Different colored agates, she thought, culled from each of the Pocket cities around the world. Cass pictured the drawer in her mind. It had been wide and shallow and lined with felt.

She turned to see which of the cabinets matched her recall . . .

As she did, another memory surfaced. She was six or seven, her hands dimpled with plumpness. Dressed in pink corduroy overalls, she knelt between a tree’s big roots. It was dark, and she was alone. She dug through the cold damp dirt with a garden spade, chucking shovel after shovel from the hole like her life was at stake. A chill rippled down her spine at the image, worse than when Poly had startled her in the portrait hall.

Something bad lurked down the path from her.

Hide
, she thought—or remembered thinking. Hiding was very important.

She and the cat jumped a foot when a knock sounded on the door. Cursing her over-stimulated nerves, Cass went to answer it.

Her dad was behind it, the welcomest visitor she could have imagined.

His hug was formal but wonderful. Cass never worried about overwhelming him with her power.

“Daughter,” he said, pushing back from her.

“Father,” she answered in the same fond tone.

They smiled at each other.

“You look well,” he said. “Unharmed by your time Outside.”

He looked amazing, but that went without saying. Whatever their age, purebloods were the definition of beautiful. Her father was tall and solemn. His close-shorn hair was raven black like hers, his eyes the same dreamy blue. The faintest lines scored his well-cut mouth as parentheses. Unless he damped the effect with glamour, he sparkled constantly.

“Come in,” she said, gesturing with a shadow of his grace. “I’ve got pizza left if you’re hungry.”

“I won’t stay long,” he demurred politely. As if she’d left a trail he could follow—which perhaps she had—he strode into the crystal study she’d come out of. He stopped in its center and looked around. Whatever he sought he didn’t appear to find. His rosy statue lips thinned slightly. The response made her curious.

“Did you want something, Dad?” she asked.

He turned to her, the movement naturally elegant. “I brought a gift for the werefox boy.”

He hadn’t brought the gift in a bag. No pureblood worth his salt would tote things around that way. They created carrying pockets by folding reality. Her dad lifted his hand with his thumb and finger pinched together. In a literal blink of her eye, a baby’s mobile dangled from his hold. Fluffy lambs and ducklings circled each other, so dear and sweet no new parent could have resisted it.

“That’s darling!” she exclaimed, knowing he’d fashioned it. By profession, her dad was a toymaker. “Dad, you know you could have brought this over when Rhona and Pip were here.”

“I could not,” he said a trifle sternly. “It would have been rude to intrude upon your reunion when I’m not able to fulfill the favor she wished of me.”

Her dad had funny ideas about manners, but Cass didn’t press him to reconsider. He could be as stubborn as her grandma.

“Orange juice?” she offered, knowing this was a rare weakness. “I dug out Gran’s old juicer.”

“That would be lovely,” he said gravely.

She returned with glasses for both of them. Faeries got a little drunk on fresh squeezed fruit, especially purebloods. Her father sipped his consideringly. She noticed he’d worn a business shirt and blue jeans for his visit. On him, they looked as nice as a tuxedo.

“Your grandmother was a fine woman,” he announced. “She lived a life any human could be proud of.”

“Yes, she did.”

“You will miss her.”

“I expect I will,” she agreed.

He set his drink on a dusty table. As soon as he took a seat in an old armchair, the cat jumped into his lap. With soft absentminded movements, he petted Poly into feline ecstasy. Cass sat on the sofa across from him. Though her father wasn’t an open book, she recognized his behavior as working up to something.

She didn’t mention he hadn’t asked about his ex yet.

After a minute of no sound but Poly’s purrs, the man she knew as Roald le Beau gave her his full attention. She was fae too, but his blue gaze hit her like a laser.

“I suppose you’ll sell this place soon,” he said.

Shock slapped her. What did he mean, he supposed she’d sell? She’d only gotten home yesterday. Didn’t he know she was staying?

“Dad.” She pressed her palm to her heart. “I’m not selling. I’m moving in.”

He was too startled to hide his horror—which wasn’t at all like him. Fae didn’t show emotions that openly. “You’re moving in? What about your mother?”

“Mom is happy in Ohio. This new fellow she married is nice. She certainly doesn’t expect her thirty-nine year old daughter to stay with her forever.”

“You’re still a child.”

“Maybe to you, Dad, but not to her. She thinks like a mundane now, like she’s forgotten this place exists. Even when we’re alone, she never talks about anything magical.”

This didn’t seem to hurt his feelings, no more than her mother’s had seemed hurt during their divorce. All at once, forty years of her parents’ weirdness became too much for her.

“Dad,” she said, determined to be direct. “Why in the world did you two get hitched?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you don’t make sense as a couple. You got on better with Gran than Mom. Did you even love her?”

“I love you.”

Cass appreciated that, but it didn’t answer her question. She lifted one eyebrow.

“Very well,” her father said. “Your mother was extremely pretty. I suppose I was lonely.”

“But you
married
her.”

“For you, darling,” he said. “So you’d have two parents.”

A muscle twitched at his temple. “I didn’t exist when you married.”

Her father smiled, slow and sweet and so beautifully Cass understood what non-fae must feel when purebloods glamoured them. “You existed for me.”

The tic was gone. He was telling the truth as he believed it.

“Now,” he said, aware that he’d disarmed her. “Why don’t you tell me about your evening? I’m interested to hear what your old friends have been up to.”

~

Cass’s father was a great listener. A glow would spread out from his attention, as warm and safe as a down blanket. Cass still floated on it as she prepared for bed. Her room was exactly as she’d left it. Her gran had preserved it, from her gargoyle night light to her tulle-draped princess four-poster. Each year in February, she’d come back and spent a week in it: her and Gran’s After-Christmas, as they called it. Cass’s mother hadn’t joined them. She hadn’t liked the reminder that this place existed. At the end of every visit, Cass and her grandmother would hug a long time.

I don’t care about your damn glamour
, her gran would say.
I couldn’t love you one sparkle more than I already do.

She’d felt fragile in Cass’s embrace that last time, a rickety little human using up her store of years. Cass had suspected there wouldn’t be many more visits. She hadn’t guessed there wouldn’t be even one.

No tears
, she told herself, slipping under the covers and dashing one away. She was going to be happy in Gran’s penthouse. That’s what Trish would want for her.

She explained to Poly which pillow she could have, then pulled the sheets to her neck.

I’m loved
, she told herself.
It only feels like I’m alone here
.

Not ready to sleep, she thought about her friends. Jin and Bridie were as fun as ever, happy with their work and lives. Seeing Rhona with Pip was lovely. If anyone could pull off single motherhood, it was her. Rhona had talked about wanting kids when she was one herself. With Gran for an example, Cass intended to spoil Pip every way she could think of.

Maybe one day she’d have a kid herself.

That idea tugged Rick Lupone’s image rather embarrassingly into her head. She grumbled and squirmed on the mattress, sorry she’d thought of him. So what if his gorgeous arms were designed for propping his massive chest over a bed partner? The chance she’d find herself under it was slim.

“Slim to
none
,” she said, hoping the warning would sink in.

Fearing it wouldn’t, she closed her eyes.

She didn’t think she had time to fall asleep, much less to have a dream. Even so, suddenly she was fleeing down a long dark tunnel. She’d been running for a while. Her lungs were burning, and a stitch stabbed her rib muscles. Ahead of her, on the tunnel’s raw concrete walls, evenly spaced lights formed rings that disappeared into a black distance. Behind her, footsteps pounded—gaining on her, from the sound of them. She couldn’t afford to be caught like this. She had to protect the keeper. She searched desperately for a hatch she could escape through, or maybe the next station. Nothing was close enough. There was no way out and no way to call for help.

Unless . . .

She had magic. She could summon her replacement. The universe would provide. That was Law, no matter how far from home she was, no matter how distant the nearest member of her bloodline.

A crash yanked Cass awake again. Across the bedroom, a photograph of her father had fallen from the wall. Poly sprang up on the pillow and made the eerie low-in-the-throat growl scaredy cats were prone to. She’d puffed up her fur as well, though she still looked a bit scrawny.

“C’mere, you,” Cass soothed, pulling the cat to her. Poly stopped growling and butted her.

The picture’s hook must have broken. It was probably old enough.

She’d snapped the Polaroid when she was a kid, surprising her dad at the workbench in his shop while he spelled a small stuffed rabbit. The picture was the only likeness of him she had. He didn’t like being photographed. As she recalled, he’d asked her to destroy it. She said she would but had changed her mind at the last minute. Some days her dad was more approachable than others, but she’d always adored him. If this was the only picture of him she’d get, she couldn’t relinquish it.

Hoping it wasn’t damaged, but reluctant to get up and check, Cass lay down on the bed again. Her heart rate decelerated more slowly than the cat’s. Fortunately, Poly didn’t mind the extra petting. Soon enough, they both settled.

You’re safe
, Cass promised her rattled self.
You’re home and you’re safe and everything’s all right.

Her head throbbed a little, but that didn’t mean her doubts should be listened to. A doubt was just a doubt, not a harbinger of danger.

“Sleep,” she murmured, putting some juice in the self-order.

This time, she did so without visions.

IT was four in the frick a.m. on a Saturday, early shift for the Lupones. Rick was driving to work with his brother Tony in his reliable gray Buick. The sky was clear and the streetlights hazy, the glow they shed on the shuttered shops undisturbed by man or beast. The city might never sleep, but the Lupone’s ’hood definitely did. River Heights was solidly blue collar, a bastion of cops and shifters, in various flavors.

“God, I need more coffee,” Tony grumbled as Rick turned on Saltpeter.

His younger brother hunched in the passenger seat, knees drawn up between him and the dash. Normally, they rode with the rest of their team in the squad’s response van. This morning, Rick decided he wanted to talk in private to his sibling. He wasn’t sure why the car seemed the best place for it. They lived a mere floor apart in the same 1910 brownstone.

But maybe the car seemed good because Tony had nowhere to stalk off to if Rick annoyed him.

Rick glanced over at him, trying to gauge his mood. His brother looked scruffy. And sleepy. Rick couldn’t tell if the weariness in his face was grumpy or carnal.

“Do I have Faerie O’s in my hair?” Tony asked without turning.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me.”

Rick returned his attention to the nearly empty road ahead. “I just wondered. You were out late last night.”

“I went to a bar.”

He hadn’t gone to O’Doul’s, their neighborhood cop hangout. “And?”

“And what?” Tony snapped. “I’m not hung over. It’s four in the frick a.m. You want sprightly, you need a sprite for a brother.”

Rick laughed in spite of this convo not starting out so well. “I’m trying to ask if you met someone nice.”

He’d thought this was an okay way to put it, but evidently not. Tony stared at him like he’d gone crazy.

“You haven’t had a date since you came out,” Rick explained.

Tony gave him the stare a few seconds longer. “That you know of,” he said darkly.

“Have you been dating?”