She’d worn a black velvet vest, the front trimmed in gold braid, brass buttons, almost making it look like one of the royal bodyguard’s uniforms, except that she wore no shirt under it and as form fitting as it was, it looked more like a corset. She wore men’s trewes and black leather boots laced up to the thighs. All she needed was a sword if she had wished to make mincemeat of someone. She had a dagger sheathed at her waist instead.
So what was it that the king wished of her now? He’d asked her to perform odd jobs before, but he usually didn’t summon her to court. Within the past week, he’d sent a missive telling her to collect taxes from a farmer, who wasn’t paying his fair share, and to search for a child missing in her area and return him to the family post-haste. That’s how he handled informing her of new missions.
She reached the top landing and saw the pompous Prince Grotto, Alicia’s cousin once-removed, narrowed green eyes focused on her, his sandy blond hair tied back in a tail, wearing the highest of fae fashions—a gold embossed burgundy brocade tunic and velvet trewes and high-topped brown leather boots. She gave him an annoyed curtsey, hating to have to acknowledge him. He gave her the slightest bow of his head, conceding he accepted her greeting, though from the scowl on his face, he looked like it killed him to do so.
“King Tibero wants to see you right away. What took you so long?” Prince Grotto growled. “He sent the missive two days ago!”
She snarled at him. “The missive didn’t reach me for a day and a half.” She hadn’t wanted to give him a reason, but she knew the prince could be dangerous. Not that the king would have Prince Grotto kill her or anything. But the prince might take it upon himself to try to have her eliminated and blame the deed on someone else. She knew he was sneaky that way.
She’d heard he’d killed one of her distant male cousins—hunting accident—Prince Grotto had said. And she didn’t believe it one bit. Not when her cousin had had a run-in with the prince the day before. When that happened, whoever was on the outs with the prince was conveniently eliminated. If anyone thought Prince Grotto was behind it, no questions were asked.
The gray haired king was seated on his throne, wearing a navy blue tunic and trewes, gold rings on every finger, some sparkling with diamonds. A young boy stood beside him, hurriedly telling him of her arrival, and then growing quiet as his eyes widened to see her. He quickly faded into the background.
One guard stood on either side of the king. She always wondered if they did so only when she came to visit, or if he always had two guards to protect him.
Prince Grotto stood nearby, arms folded across his chest, looking officious as usual. She wanted to tell him to leave, that they didn’t need him here. If the king hadn’t wanted him to hang around, he would have dismissed him, so she kept her mouth shut. She still wanted to tell him to get lost.
“Good, good, you are here.” King Tibero didn’t belittle her for arriving late, which she was grateful for, especially since Grotto was watching the proceedings. “Princess Alicia is missing.”
That took Ena aback. She clamped her gaping mouth quickly, not wanting to appear so shocked. Her first thought was the princess had again disobeyed her grandfather and was seeing Prince Deveron. But she didn’t believe the king would have Ena search for the princess, if that had been the case.
His eyes narrowed and his voice rough with upset, the king said, “She’s not in the dark fae kingdom, which is where we looked first.”
As Ena had suspected he would have done without her help. Her skin chilled. If anything bad had happened to the princess and she no longer lived, Prince Grotto would be next in line to rule the dragon fae kingdom, and he had a distinct dislike for her kind. They had an uneasy truce, ever since King Tibero had ruled their people. She had hoped that they’d have the same kind of semi-peaceful co-existence between their people at least with Princess Alicia when the time came for her to lead the dragon fae.
“I’ve had messengers dispatched. Prince Deveron is taking the news badly so I know he does not have her tucked away somewhere. He and his dark fae trackers have followed her trail. She was last seen at the high school she used to attend.”
Ena could just imagine Prince Deveron being upset. He was devoted to Princess Alicia.
She folded her arms and raised her brows. “Okay, so what do you want me to do? If Prince Deveron and his trackers have located her already…”
“They have not,” the king said hastily. “We have reason to believe she went to see her human girlfriend, Cassie, and not Deveron as we first suspected. We believe one of the dark fae was seeing the human girl, and Alicia was attempting to break off their relationship.”
Ena took a deep breath. She’d heard the princess was soft where humans were concerned. “And now she’s disappeared.”
“Aye.”
“And you think?” Even if the king’s supposition was incorrect, she still needed to know what the king thought she was going up against.
“Fae seers have taken her prisoner. That’s what I believe.”
Fae seers. Now she knew why he had called on her to take on this mission.
“And…you want me to go because I can hide my fae aura.” Not everyone could.
She gave Prince Grotto a superior look. He might think he was somebody because he was the king’s nephew, but he couldn’t save the princess like she could. On the other hand, she didn’t really know if she could save the princess, if she was even alive still. She noted Prince Grotto didn’t look in the least bit concerned that the princess might not be returning to the kingdom.
“Aye. You will name your price when you return with the princess in hand.”
“And the fae seers?” She always ensured she knew what her mission entailed exactly. She didn’t want to make the mistake of assuming anything.
“Bring them to me. Alive.”
She curtseyed. “As you wish, Your Kingship.” She gave Prince Grotto a look that could kill. If he dared try to stop her in her mission, she would eliminate him first. With or without anyone’s—including the king’s—permission.
“I will see you out,” Prince Grotto said, as if they were best of friends.
“No need,” she growled, turned, and stalked out of the throne room. She could have vanished and gone to where she was going, but she would rather make her presence known as she left the castle to ensure that everyone knew she was in the king’s good graces, not carted away to the dungeon for some misdeed.
She took a deep breath and let it out. She hadn’t been practicing keeping her fae aura hidden. No need in the fae realm.
In the human world? She hadn’t bothered there either. She hadn’t run across any fae seers—that she knew of. She would have to concentrate on hiding her fae aura. Everyone had to see her as nothing more than a human Goth.
***
Prince Deveron paced across a hotel room, not sure where else to turn. His cousins Micala and Niall were with him, and so was his bodyguard, Herlinkis. Deveron’s mother, Queen Irenis, wanted to send an army with him, but the fewer the better, he thought, when trying to determine what had happened to Alicia. If they needed an army, he could always send one of his cousins to the queen and request one.
The school had already been closed by the time they had learned Alicia was missing, though that hadn’t kept them out of the building, searching for evidence of where she’d gone. They’d found that Alicia had been at the school office, a girls’ restroom, and one classroom, and then disappeared outside in the parking lot. Which meant?
He suspected she’d gotten into a vehicle with someone. He’d prayed that she had gone home with Cassie. But when they had arrived at Cassie’s house and asked her if she’d seen Alicia, she’d said they were to get together for lunch. She never saw her at school ever. He wiped her mind of having seen them, not about to let Micala do the task as much as he couldn’t quit seeing the girl. She was lovely, a dark eyed and dark haired beauty. But she was also strictly human.
Now he and the others were sta
ying at a hotel room until the next morning when everyone returned to school, and they could try to figure out who might have taken her, because that was what Deveron feared. That she had not gone with anyone willingly.
“King Tibero was angry when he thought you had taken the princess somewhere for a rendezvous, but now I suspect he wished she’d been with you,” Micala remarked.
“You are the whole reason for this crisis!” Deveron roared, barely able to keep his fist from hitting his cousin. “If you hadn’t been after Cassie, Alicia wouldn’t have come to her rescue!”
Micala mumbled an apology. Herlinkis and Niall tried to fade into the background. No one wanted to face Deveron’s temper when it came to worrying about someone he cared this much about when she could be in a world of danger.
“She’s used to being with humans,” Niall finally ventured. “That should give her an edge.”
“She is not human,” Deveron growled. “She is fae. And whoever’s got her knows this. And he knows how to keep her from traveling in our way.”
Niall swallowed hard. “We’ll find her.”
His stomach churning with upset, Deveron took a deep breath, trying to get his anger under control. He couldn’t help Alicia, feeling the way he was now. But if a fae seer had hold of her, he feared the situation would only get worse.
***
Alicia woke with the worst headache. Wherever she was, the odor of concrete and mold assaulted her. She cast a small fae light between her hands and peered about. She was lying on a black sleeping bag that smelled of pine trees, earth, and mustiness. She sneezed. Her wrists were manacled in iron to a thick gray steel pipe. She groaned. Where was she?
Concrete block walls surrounded her, the concrete floor beneath her of the same gray color. At first, she thought she was in a dungeon.
She thought back to what had to have happened. She’d been leaving Cassie’s classroom as she held onto the fae seer’s phone to eliminate his ability to get word to his friends about her. As soon as she’d left the room, the two other boys had grabbed her wrists, slapped the iron manacles on them and dragged her off. To anyone else seeing them in the hallway, it would have looked like they were holding manacles between them. If anyone else had been in the hall, that was. She had thought to turn herself visible, scream for help as the two football player-sized guys tried to whisk her away to who knew where.
It was a good plan if it had worked. She became visible and opened her mouth to scream. But one of them nearly drowned her with something sickly sweet. And she was out just like that.
Now she was suffering from a goddess-sized headache. She looked around the room, but it was devoid of anything. No furniture, the walls were unfinished cement blocks, the ceiling covered in pipes and wires. Which most likely meant no one visited the basement except for whoever had put her down here in the first place.
She heard three male voices drawing close to the door at the top of the wooden stairs, and she quickly lay back down on the bedding, pretending to still be knocked out with whatever drug they’d given her. She tried to recline in the same position she had been in when she woke, facing the wall where her hands were manacled to the steel pipe. She wasn’t sure what her next plan of attack could be. The last one sure hadn’t worked.
She wondered if that was because they’d done this before. Several times before. And that’s why they were so prepared, knowing that if they didn’t clamp her in iron, she could fae transport away. Then she could bring others of her kind back to eliminate them.
They were like vampire hunters hunting vampires. Instead of being afraid of letting the fae know they could see them and worry that the fae might terminate them, they had taken the initiative first. Not in a million years when she thought she was only a fae seer, would she have considered eliminating any fae who might have recognized she was a fae seer. She’d been careful not to let them know she saw them as if it had been a deadly game, but that was all.
If she told these boys she’d been raised as a human, maybe they would let her go. She nixed that idea quickly enough. She couldn’t risk believing they would. For now, she would pretend to be a docile fae, sound asleep.
The door lock clicked. She tensed. The door squeaked open on rusty hinges. She barely breathed. A single bulb light flicked on overhead and made an annoying electric buzz. The door shut with a clunk. Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest. Heavy footsteps tromped slowly down the stairs, cautiously, as quietly as they could, one person, two…three, the stairs creaking with their weight. Now she was alone with the three fae seers. The wolves, she thought.
They shuffled across the floor in rubber-soled sneakers, squishy as they moved. When they reached her, they each stopped. For a long time, they stood near the edge of the sleeping bag at her back, watching her, trying to determine if she was awake. She tried very hard to keep her breathing even and not make any move that would make them suspicious.
“What now?” the one boy whispered.
“We could drown her like the others, but she was looking for someone in particular in English class. I’d like to know who.”
Ohmigod, they had drowned other fae?
“Yeah, like me maybe. She came to the same class I was in. Tore the phone out of my hands as I was texting you guys. That’s who she was after. Me.”
“No, Bryan. I think she must have been after someone else in the classroom. You said she was looking at Cassie, then glanced around as if she was trying to find a seat and saw you. I think she was after Cassie.”
“Yeah, right, Brett. Cassie’s not of the fae,” Bryan said. “We all know that.”
“No,” Brett said. “We don’t think she is. But some guy’s been hanging around who is.”
Micala. Alicia barely breathed. If he showed up again to see Cassie, they’d grab him, too.
“And now this one shows up?” Brett asked.
“Okay, look, I talked to Cassie about it,” Bryan said. “Not, you know, flat out. But just hinted at faeries. She laughed. If she was one of us, she would have said so. She’s not. She doesn’t see the guy unless he’s visible to humans. I’ve seen the way her expression changes when she actually sees him.”
“So you think it’s just that this fae has got the hots for Cassie and what? Another shows up to see her?” Brett asked. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“I recognize this girl from last year,” the other guy said. “She wasn’t a fae then. I would have known.”
“Or she hid her fae aura,” Bryan warned.
“They can’t do that. If they could, they would. And then we’d never see them. They wouldn’t have to worry about eliminating us. Doesn’t that make you wonder a little bit?” Brett said, sounding a little nervous.
“Wonder about what?” Bryan asked.
“Why…she was not a fae, and then…now she is?”
That made Alicia wonder about them, too. What if they were like her? Raised by humans and were really the fae, but just had not come of age? If she told them that, maybe they wouldn’t drown her like they had done the others. The notion they might attempt to drown her made a shiver go up her spine.
Everyone stopped speaking. Great. Had she given herself away?
***
Ena followed the trail of the fae dust—Alicia’s—to the room where Cassie had fifth period English Lit. She’d checked everywhere that Alicia had gone, and it all led back to this one class.
Had someone in Cassie’s class grabbed Alicia?
It was the day after Alicia had vanished, but Ena had to speak to Cassie to see if she could discover Alicia’s whereabouts. As soon as she saw the girl fitting the description King Tibero’s people had given her, dark brown hair and eyes, same petite build as Alicia, and that she was in this class at this period of time—Ena walked up to her and said, “Hi, are you Cassie?”
Cassie considered Ena’s black velvet tunic, same-colored slim-fitting pants, and thigh-high boots that made her look perfectly Goth, then cast her a warm smile, and said in a
cheerful voice, “That’s me.”
“Good. Can I talk to you for a moment?” Ena asked, thrilled that she had the right girl. It was easy to get humans mixed up. So many of them looked very similar to each other. But she was trying hard not to look impatient or worried.
“Sure. What did you want to talk about?”
Ena smiled, genuinely impressed with the girl. She’d never met a human…or fae…who had been that friendly when first meeting her. No wonder Alicia liked her.
“I’m trying to track down Alicia, your friend? She had to move away last year?” As if Ena had to explain who she was. Then again, Cassie might have more than one friend named Alicia.
Cassie’s expression clouded over. “She was supposed to meet me for lunch yesterday. Two of my friends said she talked to them, and she said she would join us at the Chicken Wings Party Stop. I was so excited, but she wasn’t there. They said she was wearing a costume. You know like something old time? Like she was in drama class and decided to wear it for the rest of the day. Only it was really glamorous, they said. Not anything like the worn out old stuff they wear in class. Do you…know her?”
“Yeah,” Ena said, elongating the word. “I’m a cousin of hers. Distant.” She was. They were both dragon fae. Cousins. Very distant.
“So what’s happened?” Cassie sounded alarmed. “Is she missing?”
Ena didn’t need to get the police involved in this. “No, I think I got my dates mixed up and thought I was supposed to be meeting her here today. Can I sit in with you during your class?” She hoped the question didn’t sound too bizarre. She wanted to check out the other students.
She’d found Alicia’s fae trail that had come inside the room, crossed the floor to a desk on the far side, returned, and left the room. Then she went to the students’ parking lot. Lots of kids had sat in the chairs, so it wouldn’t have meant anything that Ena hadn’t found a lot of fae dust on any of the seats. But she didn’t see a speck on any of them, and that seemed odd. Like Alicia came to class, walked across the room and left sprinkles of sparkling dust on several desk tops as she moved straight through them, but never took a seat. Why?