A Thief of Nightshade (9 page)

For five days they traveled, stopping when the sun went down and leaving the moment the world around them became visible again. On the eve of the fifth day as the sun sank below the horizon, Aislinn suddenly urged them on.

“We won’t be safe in the night,”

Lipsey whined.

Aubrey was more concerned they wouldn’t be able to see. They hadn’t brought any kind of lantern with them and her steps were unsure in the daytime, let alone in the dark of night. “Why aren’t we stopping?” As they came over the hill, Aislinn paused to answer what she had already discovered for herself.

“Because we’re here,” he said.

“Electricity?” she asked, stunned.

“Indoor plumbing, steam-powered engines, factories; all things forsaken by the animal kingdom for its relation to mankind’s indulgence and revelry. This hell hole is nothing but nightshade dens and whorehouses.”

“Nightshade?

Nightshade

is

poisonous.”

Lipsey leaped to Aislinn’s head and stretched on his toes to see more. The bear scooped him up and scolded him. “You’re gonna fall. You can see just fine from here. Nightshade is a drug, but it certainly isn’t poisonous. You have drugs where you’re from, don’t you? It’s how the Fae took our world so quickly. They brought with them vices that enslaved and Man bartered his freedom to keep them.”

Aislinn

paused

thoughtfully.

“We’ll

obviously be noticed like this. We’ll need to get you some better clothing and I’ll have to follow you best I can. Lips, can you make use of your thievery one more time for me?”

Lipsey rubbed his little hands together, a thief plotting his next heist.

“Nightshade is poisonous in certain amounts,” Aubrey argued. “And how is a little thing like him going to—”

Aislinn

grinned.

“Trust

me,

sweetheart, he’ll manage. How do you think I met him in the first place?” As Lipsey scampered toward Rheavon, they found comfort at the base of an oak big enough to forge a road through. She’d seen trees like this once on a trip to California.

“You aren’t feeling well.” Aislinn hadn’t meant it as a question. “Talk to me about your past.”

She shrugged. “Nothing to tell.”

“Tell me anyway. How did you meet Jullian?”

“He taught graduate classes at the university where I studied.”

Aislinn seemed amused. “You were one of his students?”

“Yes, eight years my senior, full of life and wisdom and absolutely nothing like me. My baby brother Harrington loved him dearly...” Her voice trailed off and her throat tightened with sudden and undeniable panic.

“What is it?” Aislinn asked calmly.

“I don’t know. Something feels ... I can’t...”

“Tell me about your family.”

“I have a younger brother, Harrington and an older sister. I can’t remember her name.” She sucked in sharply, pushing back against the wave of emotions that slammed against her.

“It’s all right. It’s the Lessening. It will come and go. You said Jullian was your professor? Keep talking.”

She forced herself to focus on what she

could

remember.

“Jullian

is

everything that I will never be. He’s fearless,

selfless

and

completely

convinced in the innate goodness of people.”

“You don’t trust others?”

“Not usually. There are those who I’d trust my life to and those who I know firsthand would feed me to the wolves given the chance. Jullian managed to keep his annoying optimism and yet still be ridiculously overprotective. He told me once that he hadn’t had faith in anyone for a long time before he met me. How I could have possibly changed that, I’ll never know.”

Aislinn

shifted

to

get

more

comfortable. “The Prince, I’ve heard, led a life that was nothing but a carefully plotted lie. His parents, in their guilt, granted him everything he desired, allowed him total and absolute freedom and yet told him nothing of what was really to come. It’s a wonder with all the privilege and power he had that he didn’t turn out to be a total jerk. What you read in his books, about the deal made with the Fae, isn’t common knowledge in the world of Man. It’s a carefully guarded secret. His brother discovered the truth and told him, revealing that the family he dearly loved had smiled at him, all the while planning his death for their own benefit. When the Prince confronted his parents, pleaded for help in finding another way, they made plans to take him to the court as a prisoner, two years prior to his coronation, where he could sit and wait in a cold cell for his succession to the Fae throne.”

“Did he suffer ... Jullian’s brother?”

Aislinn sighed, “Depends on your definition. Merrial, his own wife, betrayed him.”

“How?”

“Rumor holds that Merrial became a nightshade addict after the birth of their second child. It was an addiction that proved more important to her than her husband and children. When the Sidhe found out about Jullian’s escape, they pressed all the members of the royal family and those closest to them. All who didn’t turn on Jullian found themselves at death’s door. Merrial, in her withdrawal, traded her husband’s whereabouts for enough nightshade to last her just two weeks.”

“How do you know so much abou...”

Just then, as though it moved on its own, a leather carrier made its way up the hill in front of them. She watched as Aislinn snatched it up with Lipsey clinging to the bottom of it.

“You carried that?” Aubrey blinked in amazement.

Lipsey beamed, his little chest puffed up as he struggled to catch his breath.

Aislinn

laughed,

“Criminal

extraordinaire.”

Aubrey opened the bag to see an empire waist dress made of red satin overlaid with black lace at the sleeves and an embarrassingly low bust line. She slipped behind the tree to change, put on the makeup Lipsey had pilfered and couldn’t have been more grateful for the lack of light when she came back around.

The dress was a tad tight on her and after wearing conservative clothing most of her life, she felt positively naked.

Lipsey giggled.

Aislinn was a little harder to read.

He remained deathly still at first, then grew visibly agitated. “Absolutely not,”

he huffed.

Lipsey shrugged. “She needs to blend in, yes?”

Aubrey reached into her satchel, digging until she found the button Tabor had given her, and carefully tucked it and the necklace Jullian had given her into the hidden pocket at her bust. “I am looking for a madame, after all.”

Aislinn paced nervously. “You don’t know what men here are like, Aubrey. I can’t let you do this. Not this way. Lipsey, go back and find more suitable clothing, something more modest.”

Aubrey snatched up Lipsey before he could run off. “And I will never get within a hundred yards of the madame. There may be safer ways to do this, but we don’t have the time or...” She tapered off as another spasm seized her. She lost her hold on Lipsey, who luckily grabbed onto her arm and leaped from her to Aislinn.

“I’m all right.” She closed her eyes and breathed through it.

Aislinn hung his head, frustrated.

“And just how do you think Jul ... the Prince would feel about what you’re wearing?”

Aubrey arched a brow. “Jullian? You almost said his name again instead of forcing yourself to address him as Prince.

Sounds like—”

Aislinn growled, “Fine! Stick to the alleyways. I won’t be far behind you but I have to stay in the shadows. Once you are on the south side of the city, you’ll find her den by those who loiter around it.

Don’t do anything stupid or draw attention to yourself. Find her, trade the button and get out of there. We’ll meet back here.”

Aubrey smoothed down the wrinkles of the dress and ran her hands through her

hair. She hadn’t thought much about her appearance in awhile. Now that he’d brought to her attention that Jullian wouldn’t have approved, it made her feel vulnerable.

Aislinn took note of her fussing. “Go, that tawdry rag doesn’t do you justice.”

Aubrey was astounded. Horses’ hooves clopped all around her as carriages made their way down cobblestone streets. Men and women were dressed with equal splendor in full formal hats and tails, dresses and gloves.

This is the world Jullian grew up in.

It felt like she had stepped into a Sherlock Holmes book. She took a moment, hidden by a veil of shade, to look around. Streetlights gave off a soft golden glow,

illuminating

finely

stocked

windows and seemingly euphoric citizens in their evening merriment. Rheavon was nothing like she’d expected, based on how medieval Tabor’s kingdom had been, but then again Aislinn himself had said that the animals had forsaken the ways of Man.

Quietly, she made her way through the back alleys and narrow side streets until she came to a much seedier part of the city. Here, windows hid behind locked bars; men and women alike hurried to get where they were going and just as the bear had said, those who loitered near the doorways gave far more indication of the building’s contents than their signs. She’d expected to feel timid, too shy even to speak to the girls who would lend her entrance, but in such strange surroundings, dressed in such foreign apparel, she felt like someone else entirely.

Three girls and two men lingered beneath a bright red sign with the words “Crimson Stair” etched into the wood.

Aubrey approached the slightest of the three women. “Pardon, but I am looking for Lady Crimson?”

The girl giggled as she twirled a lock of oily blond hair around her finger. She wore a bright blue bustier, laced in silver and edged at the bust line in bright white.

Her eyes were rimmed in red, her mouth dry and caked with lipstick. She shook a little from the cold wind that suddenly swept in from the alley nearest them. “She doesn’t need you or what you can offer our house.”

The second girl was tall and far too slender. Her strawberry blond hair hung just to her collarbone. “Lady Crimson is inside, I could get her for you,” she said meekly.

The shortest and oldest of the girls, with ginger hair and a healing bruise that Aubrey could see beneath her makeup, stepped beyond the rest of them. She reached out and took Aubrey by the chin, turning her head to the left and right.

“We’ll see. Turn around, let’s have a look at you.”

Aubrey graciously smiled, spinning deftly and bowed ever-so-ladylike when she was through. “I traveled quite a ways to come here. I’ve heard there isn’t any house as skilled or as prestigious as this.

Please, if I may have just a brief word with the madame?”

“Where are you from?” The ginger-haired girl asked.

They hadn’t discussed this and Aubrey ran through Jullian’s books in her mind, searching for the name of a town or city. He’d been so vague about the human part of Avalar. “Trace, it’s a little town at the base of the—”

One of the men cut Aubrey off, “She knows where Trace is, you twit. Everyone does.” He was tall, maybe six-three or more and had clean-cut, curly red hair. He was dressed well. He pulled Aubrey to him with one arm and began a slow seduction of her exposed throat and chest with his free hand. His fingers traced her neckline and dipped to just between her breasts.

Aubrey

closed

her

eyes,

memories

she’d

buried

long

ago

resurfacing. She was willing to bear his touch as long as it took to get past those two doors, regardless of how much pain it caused her, but just as he had the fabric of her dress in his fist, ready to tear it away, a low growl sounded from behind them.

Aislinn.

The man didn’t immediately drop her as she’d expected. The girls screamed and fled, leaving only the man and his companion to face whatever threat was baiting them from the dark. Clearly, she had caught the attention of a man who liked a good chase.

The man sneered, “You’ve brought a pet, I see. Something about you told me you were special.” He leaned in, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. “Not like all the others.”