“Fae magic. Big white beam of death. Solid concrete would stop it, but most buildings around here are cinderblock or wood. They cast it from the door and killed everyone.”
Liam slipped off his stool and headed to the door. Leaving, I guessed, for air with fewer legs and wings. He stopped at the door and turned around. As he walked from side to side I watched his gaze, and in an instant I understood.
I walked to the door and looked. When last I came here it was too ugly, too bad for me to tell, but now I saw the same thing he did. There was no way someone had stood at the door and done this—the wolves at the bar and the wolves at the back were killed from the same direction. We hit the door and ran out into the air, which smelled so sweet.
I looked around. “Where’s Ari?” I’d left her by the car, but now the square stood empty. I ran through the wolf town, listening for footsteps in the shadows, hearing a door shut somewhere. “Ari!” I yelled, and Liam came after me. “If you hurt her, I’ll finish what the fae started.” No one answered. Above the wind, I heard her soft sobbing.
I followed it back, back closer to the square, to the wolf larder. The door stood open and in the shadows Ari knelt, tears streaming down her face. “You can’t tell, can you? You don’t know what happened here.”
“What was it?” I went over and stood by her.
“Death. It didn’t kill them the normal way. It tore them out of their bodies. Smeared their souls across the ground.”
I took her shoulders and turned her away. “You didn’t say anything about this last time.”
“I’ve used a lot more magic. I see better now.”
“What were you doing here in the first place?” asked Liam, and I told him. About the wolves. About the pigs. About the kids. “You come down every week to negotiate with wolves. To trade for children?” He’d had a lot to take in in the last few weeks.
“Every week. They’ve always found new ones.”
He looked inside the larder and winced, growing pale. “What if you skip a week?”
I shook my head. “They’ll make fresh bacon bits. They had a fae child.”
“I can tell. It’s like a footprint in the magic. He was here a few days at least.” Ari put her hand out toward the door, like she could reach out and help them.
“The wolves ate one of these fae?” asked Liam.
“No,” I said. “If they had, the fae would have already killed every living thing in the state. They took a fae child. The question is how they got to him in the first place.” I walked out of the larder and back into the square, gauging a line from the bar. Grimm made me take geometry twice, the second time on my own dime. I hated him for it then and loved him for it now.
The blast that killed the wolves in the bar and the children in the larder had come from the same point, and I walked back along the buildings, peeking in through windows to confirm my theory.
Ari followed me with Liam behind her. “Marissa saved him.” I ignored her story. I’d either come out sounding like a commando or a clown, I was sure.
At the far end of wolf town stood a barn. The white paint curled on the doors and the roof sagged inward, but the blast line led straight up to it. I pulled on the door and it didn’t budge. Liam braced his foot against the door. “Let me help.” He strained until it slid back.
Ari held out a hand, reaching for something I could not see. “It was here.” She focused on nothing, her eyes looking beyond the dirt in the barn. “The seal was here.”
“How do you know?” I asked, but I knew that tone. She wouldn’t have said anything if she wasn’t sure.
“I can feel it. They took it through here.”
I walked into the barn, looking at the smooth dirt, and a pattern in it caught my eye. I took an LED flashlight from my purse and shone it on the floor. It was only part dirt. A block of marble, black with gold veins stuck out in the center, and carved on it I saw runes—runes I recognized.
I opened my compact. “Grimm.”
His eyes appeared and widened in surprise. “I thought you were headed into Kingdom.” I wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or amusement in his voice.
“I keep hearing I need to make better decisions. So I did. You know those books you sent me?” I didn’t wait for him to answer as I turned the compact to show him the engravings. “The seal came through here. That’s some sort of gate, but not one I’ve seen you use.”
“That is not a realm gate,” said Grimm, his voice dull as he worked to control his emotions. “Turn around and look behind you.”
I did and shuffled along in the dirt until my toe ran across something. Liam and Ari helped me rake away the dirt. This circle I recognized. It looked like the standard gates I’d hop on to go to Avalon or anywhere else.
I ran my finger over the engravings. “Isn’t this missing the directional runes?” I did read those books, and while I couldn’t activate a gate at all, I understood the basic concepts.
“Indeed,” said Grimm, “one could bypass the realm seal and appear almost anywhere.” That someone would have to be completely crazy. Without directional runes, a gate flickered between a thousand points. The odds of winding up half in one and half in another were better than I liked. Traveling through a realm gate with no directional runes might save baggage fees, but it was a sure way to wind up in several pieces.
“So what is this?” asked Liam, walking on the black marble.
“It is a demesne altar,” said Grimm. “With it one could go directly into a fairy’s demesne. Perhaps even to their home.”
“You know, you’ve never even had me over for dinner,” I said.
“My dear, a fairy’s home is like the fae realm, only a thousand times stronger. You’d be insane before we had cocktails.”
I looked from gate to gate. “So someone takes the Seal out through here, and through that thing. I’m pretty sure they didn’t take it to you, so I’d bet on Godmother. Grimm, we’re getting out of here and heading into Kingdom.”
“Be careful, Marissa. It took me over a month and three dozen pigs to make up for your choice of uniform last time. I’d like you on your way.”
Standing here I once more felt the wolf’s teeth tearing into me and I shivered. “Don’t worry. I’m not considering renting a place. The whole town makes my arm hurt.”
“Why?” asked Liam.
I didn’t feel like recounting my bad decision making to him. “Our world doesn’t look like this to the fae. The boy could barely move. The wolves were coming, and I didn’t have time to get him and me into the van. So one of them wound up taking a nice chunk out of my arm.”
Liam walked over, and I pulled back my sleeve to show the jagged scars that ran along my arm. “You fought with one of those things over a kid you don’t even know?” He looked at me with surprise as we walked to the entrance of the barn. “How did you keep them away from the kid?”
“I was wearing a red jumpsuit with a hood. Created a diplomatic incident, from what I gather. And yes, I picked a fight with them. It’s my job.”
A guttural growl came from outside the barn, and I saw a tiny pack of wolves had gathered. “Little Red Riding Hood came back,” said one of them. “Not even a huntsman could save you this time.”
“Help,” I said, and Ari and Liam helped me slide the barn door shut. A wolf thrust his hand in as it closed, and we smashed it with the door. Outside, the shouts became growls and howls.
“We can kill them,” said Liam. “Wolves may be big, but they aren’t that big.” Something slammed into the barn door, cracking a plank.
“These might be the extra-large variety,” Ari said.