Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella (7 page)

She gave a small shrug but said nothing else.

It was a quick drive back to my cozy, two-bedroom townhome, and Anwynn stayed wonderfully silent through the whole ride. But as soon as we parked in the driveway and I opened the door, she pushed past me, her tail thumping against the vase of sticks, knocking it over and scattering the contents across the tile entryway.

“There,” she said, “I fixed it for you. You said you wanted to set traps.” She sat in the entryway as I closed the door.

I picked my way across the fallen reeds and set the vase back upright. “You know,” I said, “that’s actually not a bad idea.” It might slow Maarten down, at the very least.

“What did I say about my ideas?” Anwynn said, her tail beginning to swish against the tile. “Something about them being better than yours, as I recall.”

I stepped onto the carpet, knelt, and pressed a hand to it. I transformed the carpet surrounding the entryway into a number of knee-high spikes. Anwynn, her ears against her head, leapt over them and made her way to the living room.

She was on the couch, whirling in a circle, by the time I followed. I went to the windows, transforming them to metal. “I thought we’d agreed you’d use the blanket in the corner to sit on,” I grumped. My couch was beige, and Anwynn was black with an undercoat the same color and texture as steel wool.

She was
not
a non-shedding, hypoallergenic sort of creature.

“You told me, when I moved in, to make myself at home,” Anwynn said. “I’ve taken that directive to supersede any directive that followed. Besides, you seem to have things well in hand. What could I possibly do to help?”

“Well, you could
offer
.”

Anwynn barked out a laugh and pressed a paw to the television remote. “You clearly have no idea how the relationship between a Sidhe and her bonded follower works.”

I hadn’t lived with a roommate since freshman year of college. As I recall, we’d finally decided to just draw a line down the middle of our tiny room, marking the border like two feuding countries. And then there’d been my ex-husband, Owen. That hadn’t ended well, either. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this living-with-someone-else thing.

Not that I had a choice. I needed Anwynn, and she needed me. For now, anyways.

The television flickered on. “…and this just in: a Melanie Baker has just been abducted from her home in Kenton. Police say the criminal is driving a green ’89 Honda Accord. Consider the suspect armed and dangerous. If you should see the vehicle, please call the police to report it. Passers-by say they saw someone placing an unconscious Ms. Baker into the back of the car.”

I whirled toward the television, reaching into my pocket to check for the vial of unicorn water. “He’s got another victim. Now all he needs is the kelpie heart.”

The anchor on the television glanced at his papers. “Ms. Baker is an employee of the Multnomah County Jail. There is some speculation that this abduction may be related to her job.”

I blinked. A connection began to form in my mind.

Something thudded against the garage door.

In an instant, Anwynn went from relaxed on the couch to standing in the middle of the living room, her hackles raised, a growl in her throat.

I pulled the butter knife from my pocket, transforming it into a sword. The kelpie heart shifted in my pocket, and it felt heavier than it had a moment before.

“Are you going to ask me not to eat the sprites?” Anwynn said.

Before I could answer, the door to the garage blew inward, shattering into tiny bits of wood. So much for metallic windows. There just hadn’t been enough time. The cloaked man stepped inside, the scarf still covering the lower half of his face; six sprites hovered around his head, needle swords drawn. Sweat gathered in my palms. I’d not fought someone yet who was also Talented in swordplay, who could use magic to move the way that I did.

Maarten drew a sword from the scabbard strapped to his back. “The problem with sprites,” he said, “is that you cannot stop them from doing mischief, no matter how hard you try. The souring milk led you to me, did it not?”

I didn’t bother answering. “And to think,” I said to Anwynn, “I used to like bringing work home.”

“Your work probably didn’t include sharp, pointy edges,” Anwynn said.

“I got a paper cut or two.”

“Be quiet,” barked Maarten. “Give me the kelpie heart and I’ll leave you in peace.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my fast-beating heart. “You know I can’t do that. I know what you have planned for that woman. It’s my job to protect the mortal world and its inhabitants from Fae like you.”

He took a step toward me, his scarf shifting with his breath. “This is your fault to begin with, you know.”

Before I could form any sort of response, or even consider what the hell he meant, he attacked. I barely got my sword up to block him in time. Maarten moved with the swiftness of a striking snake, each step a blur. “Find the kelpie heart,” he called to his sprites. They scattered.

Anwynn leapt after them, snapping at the air.

I didn’t have time to pay attention to her battle. I set my feet, turned my body to the side to present a smaller target, as I’d been taught. Maarten’s blade was broader than mine, but he lifted it as though it weighed nothing. He thrust at me, and I slipped to the side, but not before his sword caught the edge of my coat. I spun to disengage it and faced him only in time to block another attack.

I leapt back and onto the television console, trying to put some space between me and Maarten, trying to gain some higher ground. I teetered on the edge as he followed, slicing.

A shower of sparks, and the top half of my television crashed to the ground. The sparks obscured my vision. I ducked to the side, too late. The blade caught my left shoulder, cutting through cloth and biting into the muscle.

I couldn’t help the cry that eked out of my lips. The cuts from the sprites still stung. This wound was worse. Warm blood trickled from the gash, wetting my coat sleeve, making it stick to my skin.

“You can’t win this fight,” Maarten said. He slashed at me again, even as he spoke. His voice didn’t sound the least bit winded.

I batted his blade to the side and thrust at his chest. He slid to the side, as easily as a cat sidestepping an outstretched hand. I could do better than this. My shoulder ached—the sort of bone-deep hurt that told me this was more than a scratch.

If I failed, no one else would pick up my sword. No one would take my place. This was what I’d been born to do. I breathed out and felt the magic stir to life in my belly. The pain in my shoulder lessened, my heartbeat and breathing quickened, my limbs felt restless and alive.

I followed Maarten, keeping my perch atop the console, and cut at his neck. My sword sliced through the bottom half of the scarf and left a beaded trail of blood in its place. He clutched at his neck, as though assessing the damage. I danced two steps closer and aimed for his heart.

He blocked the blow, but only just barely. I reached back, grabbed a photo in its frame from the wall, and transformed it into a stone. I tossed it straight at Maarten’s head.

A stone was too dissimilar from the photo for it to keep its form. It shattered against his skull, tiny bits of stone raining onto the carpet. From the dazed look in Maarten’s eye, it had still stunned him.

“Nicole!” Anwynn called out. “Behind you.”

I turned my head and saw, from the corner of my eye, two approaching sprites. They barreled into my back, little swords stabbing. “Anwynn,” I managed, trying to grab them with my injured arm, “I give you full permission to eat them.”

“Good,” she said. “I already ate two.”

And then Maarten had regained his composure. He sliced at me, forcing me back toward the wall. I grimaced as the sprites climbed over my back, stabbing as they went, as though I were a piece of land they needed to claim by planting as many sharp, pointy flags as possible.

I leapt from the console, ducking into a roll. The gash in my shoulder burned, but I felt the crunch as I managed to crush one of the sprites beneath me. The other one darted free in time. “Anwynn, could use some help here!”

“A bit busy at the moment,” she said. She turned in circles in the kitchen, trying to catch a sprite that had latched onto her tail.

Maarten strode forward with easy determination, his cloak billowing behind him. My living room was a mess of overturned objects, little spatters of blood, and broken glass. Those goddamned sprites had ransacked my place, and in near-record time.

I lifted my sword, ready to face him. And then I felt, more than saw, the remaining sprite fall into my pocket.

The pocket where I had the kelpie heart.

I reached into the pocket without thinking and immediately felt a needle-sword entering my palm, almost exactly where the other one had stabbed me earlier. I hissed with pain.

When I drew my hand out, it had a sprite attached to it. The sprite had its arm tucked around a small, brown stone. The heart. I shook my hand, and the sprite tumbled free, but she did not let go of the heart.

I couldn’t see Maarten’s mouth behind the scarf, but I knew that he smiled by the way his eyes crinkled. I leapt forward. “You are
such
an asshole!”

My blade caught the scarf again, and this time, it tore free.

The face beneath was not scarred or marred in any way. It was smooth, beautiful, with full lips and a strong, narrow jaw. It looked oddly familiar, though I could not place it. A drop of blood beaded at the corner of his mouth where I’d caught him with the point of my sword.

“You’re not Maarten of the Daelus family,” I said.

He reached up and wiped the blood from his mouth, a smirk beginning at the corners. “I never said that I was.”

His three remaining sprites flew to his sides.

We stared at one another for a moment, and then he darted toward the open doorway of the garage.

“Anwynn!” She’d already started moving by the time I called her name. She leapt for the sprite with the heart. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Her jaws snapped shut on empty air as the sprite shot up to avoid her.

The Sidhe man pulled something from inside his cloak, whirled, and threw.

I didn’t see the knife hit Anwynn; I only saw her on the ground, the hilt of a blade sticking from her shoulder.

And then, with a whirl of his cloak, the Sidhe man and his sprites were gone.

CHAPTER SIX

I DROPPED TO THE FLOOR BY ANWYNN’S SIDE
, fearing the worst. I had no idea how long the blade was, or whether it had reached her lungs. “Are you okay?”

For a moment she said nothing, and fear flooded my belly. And then she cracked open one eye, her breathing labored. “Yes, never been better.”

“Really?”

“No. I have a
knife
in my shoulder, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I grabbed Anwynn’s blanket from the corner of the living room, knelt at her side, and put both hands around the knife’s hilt. “So this will probably hurt…”

“Just do it.”

I did. A spurt of blood gushed out as soon as the blade left her shoulder. I pressed the blanket to the wound. I noticed, curiously, that the blood from my shoulder had trickled to my fingers, making them red and sticky.

“He got you too,” she said, her gaze going to my left arm.

“Yeah,” I said. The room seemed to spin a bit. “If that’s not Maarten of the Daelus family, who
is
he and what does he want with a daemon geas? Who is ‘she’ and why will she be pleased?”

“You’re the brains,” Anwynn said. She closed her eyes, her breath rasping in her throat. “At least you think you are. Figure it out.”

I waited until the flow of blood from Anwynn’s shoulder had slowed, which didn’t take very long. Grushounds were tough beasts. And then I saw to my own wound. It was deep, but not to the bone. I found my first aid kit and bandaged it. I really needed stitches, or some of Kailen’s magical healing, but this would hold for now.

That man had both the kelpie heart and the victim. If I didn’t move quickly, he’d complete the blood rite and enact the daemon geas, and I’d have another dead mortal’s blood on my hands plus the Arbiter breathing down the back of my neck.

“Chris also worked at the county jail,” I said, slowly. I pulled some needle and thread from my junk drawer. “I’m going to sew you up, so stay still.”

I picked black thread and tied a knot. The motions were orderly, soothing. “The daemon geas grants magical powers to those who can control them.”

I stitched the wound closed as Anwynn clenched her teeth.

“He covered his face for a reason other than disfiguration and other than hiding from me.” I stopped. “Oh. Oh no.” The blood drained from my face, my heart thumping at my ribs like a bird that’s been caged too long. “I know where I’ve seen him before.” I tied the knot off quickly, my fingers trembling.

Anwynn struggled to her feet. “Enlighten me.”

“This was back before I bonded you,” I said. “Kailen had taken me to meet my biological parents for the first time. My father wasn’t there, because Grian had already abducted him. There were Guardians in my parents’ home, and their leader was corrupt, taking favors from Grian in return for doing her bidding. One of the Guardians with her…it was him. He could have been just doing the bidding of the leader, but I’m beginning to think the corruption of the Guardians ran deeper than that.

“He didn’t hide his face from me in the marketplace. He was hiding from the other Guardians. They’d recognize him, and they’d have questions on why he’d want the ingredients to enact a daemon geas. I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. He’s not trying to take advantage of the power vacuum left by Grian’s imprisonment. He’s trying to restore things to the way they were.”

Anwynn shook herself, painting my living room with more little spatters of blood. “The daemon geas is for Grian.”

“Yes. He means to set her free.” Merlin had taken away Grian’s magic, and since he was a Changeling, no one but me could undo this. But someone could grant her new powers, and Grian was Talented in mind magic. She had the skill and the willpower to control a daemon geas, if anyone did. “We need to get to the jail. Now.”