Lost Soul (Harbinger P.I. Book 1) (12 page)

T
he Lady
of the Forest gestured to us with one slender hand. “Bring them to me.”

The scouts led us at spear-point to the throne.

“Your names?” the Lady asked us.

“Leon, ma’am,” Leon said in a low voice. “Leon Smith.”

“Alec Harbinger, P.I.,” I said levelly. I knew that our best chance to get out of here in one piece was to not show any weakness that the faeries could exploit.

“P.I.?” she asked. Her voice was soft and low and her words seemed to melt into my mind.

“Preternatural Investigator.”

She frowned momentarily. “You work for that wretched society. What are you doing in my forest?”

“We weren’t aware that this was your forest, my lady,” I said, knowing how much faeries loved custom and societal niceties, “otherwise we would have sought you out to inform you of our visit. As I was telling your soldier, we were just about to leave here and return to our own realm.”

“I will ask you one more time, Alec Harbinger. Why are you here?”

“We were looking for two friends of ours, thinking that they might be in this realm, but now I know that they aren’t.”

“More humans?”

I nodded.

“Apart from my slaves,” she said, indicating the throne-bearers, “there have not been any humans in this part of Faerie for quite a while. Why did you believe you would find them here in my forest?”

“I thought they had been trapped here while two faeries took their place in the human world. I now know that isn’t true. They’ve been in the human world the entire time.”

“Intriguing,” she said, leaning forward, her flower hair decorations blooming slightly. “Tell me of this human drama.”

I told her what I had recently figured out. “Our friends were taken by changelings.”

Her face screwed up, but it was still pretty. “Ugh, those vile creatures.” She turned to one of the warriors, a faerie who wore a thick armband of bones on his left arm. “I thought those things had been banished from my forest.”

“Yes, my lady, they were,” he said with a bow of his head. “What the human is talking about happened in the human world after we banished them.”

The Lady of the Forest looked at me again. “I want nothing to do with those disgusting monsters.”

“Then we’ll be on our way,” I suggested, hoping that her revulsion at the changelings that had once lived in this forest would make her want to let us leave. If we reminded her of something that was abhorrent to her, wasn’t it better for her to just let us go and forget about us?

“You know it isn’t that simple, mortal,” she said. “I require an exchange.”

I groaned inwardly. This was exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid. But now I knew that James and Sarah had been taken by changelings, I also knew that the clock was ticking before they were killed and the changelings assumed their identities permanently. I didn’t have time to haggle with the Lady of the Forest, but I couldn’t just agree to anything. Faeries knew when they had an advantage and they loved to exploit it.

“What sort of exchange?” I asked her.

“Don’t sound so downtrodden,” she said lightly. “Is it really so bad to strike a bargain with the Lady of the Forest? Maybe I can think of something that is beneficial to both of us. Tell me what you want, Alec, and you can have it.”

“I want to get out of here.”

A smile lit her face. “Something so simple?”

“Yes, a simple thing that won’t require much in return.”

The Lady of the Forest pouted slightly. “You’re taking all the fun out of it. Let me think what would be a suitable exchange for safe passage out of Faerie.”

“We don’t need safe passage,” I said. “Just show us the door and we’re gone.” I wanted to keep my end of the deal as basic as possible so she couldn’t ask too much in return. She would suggest an escort of armed faerie guards all the way back to our world and then from Dark Rock Lake to Dearmont if she thought it meant she could ask for more from me in the exchange.

“Very well. In exchange for what you ask, I will require a simple thing in return. At some time in the future, I may require your services. I shall send an envoy to you in your world and ask that you do something for me.”

“Do what?” I asked. I wasn’t going to agree to something so vague.

“I don’t know yet. I’m sure a man of your talents may be needed to aid the Lady of the Forest in some way.”

“No deal. I’m not agreeing to anything unless I know exactly what it is.”

She sighed. “All right. When my envoy informs you of the task required, you may refuse. But until you accept a task, you will be in my debt.”

“And I get told what the task is before I accept or refuse?”

“Of course. I can see you’re no fun. There’s no daring in your spirit. You will be told the tasks and you decide whether to accept or not upon hearing their nature.”

It sounded fair. I could refuse tasks until I was offered one that was simple and safe. Although “safe” was a relative word when dealing with faeries.

“And you show us the way back to our own world immediately,” I said.

“Yes, of course. I’m already bored with you.”

“I accept.” As soon as I said the words, I felt a rush of energy rise from the ground up through my feet. It spread up my body like a warm tingle, snaking up my spine until it reached my head. I felt dizzy for a few seconds but then it passed and I felt refreshed, as if I’d just had a relaxing sleep. A new flower, a white lily, bloomed in the Lady of the Forest’s hair. Whether I liked it or not, she and I were now bonded until I paid my debt to her.

To keep her side of the bargain, she stood and faced the forest on the right side of her throne before waving her right hand in a delicate pattern in the air in front of her. A pale green glow appeared, and beyond it, I could see the faery forest’s equivalent in my own world. I grabbed Leon’s arm and led him to the portal.

Without a word to the faeries, we stepped through and found ourselves in a pine forest that I was sure was the same one we had left earlier to travel to Faerie. But how much earlier? I took my phone out of my pocket to check the date and the GPS, but the damn thing was trying to sync. Traveling to other realms wasn’t part of my cellphone plan.

So I had no idea what day it was or exactly where we were. It was daytime—afternoon, judging by the position of the sun where I could see it through the gaps in the towering pines—and it was warm and humid.

“Do you hear that?” Leon asked me. He cocked his head, listening for something.

I heard it too. The sound of children laughing. “It’s this way,” I said, trudging through the undergrowth.

We found a trail and followed it down a slight incline. When we reached the bottom, we could see the beach and the cabins through the trees. At least the Lady of the Forest had opened a doorway near our destination.

As we walked toward the cabins, I could tell we’d been gone for some time. The cars in the parking lot weren’t the same ones that had been there when we’d entered the woods at twilight with the Janus statue. I was glad to see the Land Rover there, but it was parked in a different location. Maybe Felicity had needed to use it for some reason. I opened the back and put my sword inside, out of the way.

We reached Cabin No. 6 and I tried the door. It was locked, so I knocked. A large tattooed man opened it. “Yeah?”

I hesitated, confused. “I’m looking for Felicity. She’s a tall, English woman with long, dark hair and glasses. Have you seen her?”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. “Wrong cabin, Pal,” he said as he closed the door in my face.

Felicity had rented the cabin for three days. Surely we hadn’t been gone for longer than that.

“Come on, man, let’s go to my RV,” Leon said. “Michael will let us know what’s been happening since we’ve been gone.”

I followed him to a large, new RV. He banged on the door. “Michael, you in there?”

The door opened immediately and Michael, who had looked worried when he opened the door, grinned. “Sir, you’re back.”

“Yes, now let us in.” He climbed the steps into the RV and I followed. The interior still had that brand-new vehicle smell. Judging by the white leather seats and expensive looking everything, this RV was definitely at the higher end of the market.

Felicity was sitting at the table in the living area. When she saw me, her face lit up. “Alec!”

“Okay, listen up,” I said, sliding in behind the table next to her and gesturing Leon and Michael over. “I was wrong about James and Sarah. They weren’t taken to Faerie. They were attacked in the woods by creatures known as changelings. Now, unlike other faeries, who trap their victims in Faerie and use a glamor to look like them, changelings slowly transform into a physical copy of their victim. It takes a while and they need to feed off the original body every night.

“That’s why you heard them dragging something heavy back from the woods and why they wouldn’t let anyone into their cabin,” I told Leon. “They didn’t find anything in the woods; they were bringing James and Sarah’s bodies back to feed off them. When they left the lake the day after you, they must have taken the bodies with them. During the transformation, the changeling can’t be too far from the victim’s body. That’s why James won’t leave the house.”

“And he’s going into the woods every night to feed from the body?” Felicity asked. “That’s gross.”

I nodded. “They probably have the bodies hidden in that little graveyard. Sarah’s house is on the other side of those woods, so that would be an ideal location for them both to go at night and feed. Also, when we were there, I saw hawthorn vines growing there. Hawthorn grows in places where there’s magical energy. James and Sarah will be in an enchanted sleep. It’s a magical sleep that keeps them in a kind of suspended animation.”

“Like in the fairy tales,” Leon said. “Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and all that.”

“Exactly like that,” I said. “And they’ll be like that for three full moons. The changeling attacks its victim on a new moon because the new moon symbolizes new beginnings, and for the changeling, the transformation is a new beginning. Then it feeds every night until the third full moon, when it rips out the sleeping victim’s heart and changes permanently into a copy of that person.”

I looked at Felicity. “The full moon that is approaching will be the third full moon after James and Sarah were attacked at the lake. So we need to stop the changelings by the next full moon or it’ll be too late. They’ll rip out James and Sarah’s hearts and complete the transformation.”

The color drained from Felicity’s face. “Alec, you’ve been gone for five days. The full moon is tonight.”

“
I
can’t believe
it was five days,” I said as we sped along the highway. Felicity was driving the Land Rover and I was in the passenger seat so I could call Mallory as soon as there was a signal on the phone. Leon and Michael were following us in the RV.

Mallory was going to have to deal with Timothy and the other werewolf tonight while I dealt with the changelings. James and Sarah would die tonight if I didn’t find their bodies and wake them up. The changelings would assume their identities forever. Now it made sense why Changeling James had been asking Amelia Robinson about her will. Changelings loved treasure and there was probably no better treasure than controlling interest in a huge lumber company. It seemed like faeries were becoming modernized. Once, treasure meant a pot of gold coins; now it was stocks and shares.

I shook my phone as if that would somehow make a signal appear. “Is your phone working?” I asked Felicity.

“It’s in my handbag by your feet.”

I got her phone and checked it. No signal.

“Alec,” Felicity said, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“When you didn’t come back from Faerie for five days, I rang the Society.”

“What? Why? I told you not to.”

She bit her lip. “You said you’d be gone for two or three days and to call the Society if you were gone for a week.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t gone for a week.”

“You said a couple of days, so when it stretched out to five, I became worried.”

Great. So now I also had to call the Society to tell them to cancel the rescue party, if there’d ever been one in the first place. But first I had to call Mallory. She had to deal with those werewolves.

My phone buzzed a few times. I looked at the screen. I had texts from Mallory asking where I was. More importantly, I had a signal. I called Mallory.

“Alec, where the hell are you? It’s been….”

“Five days, yes, I know. The time dilation between here and Faerie was a little different to what I expected.”

“Did you find James and Sarah?”

“No, they’re not in Faerie. I think they’re hidden in a small family graveyard on the Robinson estate.”

“Are they alive?”

“They won’t be if we don’t get to them tonight.”

“No problem. Count me in.”

“It isn’t as simple as that. We need to lock up the werewolves, too. Did you find out who the other werewolf is?”

“Yeah, it’s a girl named Josie Carter. She lives with her mother on the opposite side of town to Timothy. I drove by her place a couple of times but I didn’t make contact with her, just as you asked. Of course, if I didn’t hear from you in the next couple of hours, I would have had to go talk with her.”

“Sorry about that. Did you find a place to lock them away for the night?”

“Yeah, there’s an old abandoned place south of town called McDermott’s Farm. I broke in and checked it out. There’s a basement with a sturdy door. Should be perfect.”

“Okay, you get Timothy and Josie over there while I head over to the Robinson place. I’ll meet you at the farm after I wake James and Sarah from an enchanted sleep and kill the changelings.”

“Sounds like I get the easy job this time,” Mallory said.

“You mean like most times.” Before she could answer, I ended the call.

My next call was to Blackwell Books. Victoria answered and I asked her if she had the ingredients to make a foxglove paste.

“I do,” she said. “Are you trying to wake someone out of an enchantment?”

“Yes, two people. Can you make the paste for me as soon as possible? I’ll be there soon to collect it.”

“I can do that.”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”

When I ended the call, Felicity said, “Foxglove paste?”

“It’s a traditional remedy for enchanted sleep. When applied to the eyelids of the sleeper, it wakes them up. Apparently. I’ve never actually had to use it before.”

“You remember everything you learned at the Society?”

“I went to the Academy of Shadows. I’ve had this stuff floating around in my head from a young age.”

Felicity frowned. “I’ve never heard of the Academy of Shadows.”

“Not many people have. That reminds me, I need to call the Society and tell them that I’m not actually trapped in Faerie.” I made the call to the London headquarters. I could probably have called the nearest American HQ, which happened to be in Massachusetts, but I preferred to go straight to the top. After all, my father was in the Inner Circle, so I should get something out of that other than attempts on my life.

A woman with an English accent answered and I asked for Thomas Harbinger. After confirming who I was, she put me through to him.

“Alec,” he said in his usual gruff voice, “I was told you were lost in Faerie.”

“I’m fine, Dad. You can call off the cavalry, if you were sending anyone here to help me.”

“Well, actually, we weren’t.”

“Oh, okay.” It felt great to be appreciated. The Society couldn’t even be bothered to help me when they thought I was trapped in another realm.

“We knew you’d be all right, Son. You’ve been in worse scrapes before. By the way, how is your assistant getting on in her new job? She’s brand new at this, so I thought it would be good experience for her to work for you.”

“I know what you thought, Dad.”
You thought you it was okay to send someone to spy on your son. Maybe you thought I would eventually confide in her about Paris and tell her more than I told the Society when I was interrogated with that damned truth collar around my neck.

“Well, anyway, it’s good to hear from you,” he said. “I hear you’re busy already. Good lad. Keep it up.” He ended the call.

“That’s nice,” I told Felicity. “Even after you called them and told them I was trapped in Faerie, they weren’t going to do anything to help.”

“That’s kind of good, though, because you said you didn’t want them to help.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, then, it all turned out for the best.”

“I guess so,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. If I couldn’t rely on the Society’s help when I was in trouble, I was on my own out here. I had always had the Society to fall back on like a safety net, and when I was in Chicago, they couldn’t do enough for me. My fall from grace had obviously changed that situation and now I was expected to fend for myself no matter what.

If the Society of Shadows wasn’t going to offer me anything more than “we knew you’d be okay” platitudes, I might as well find people I could rely on and build a team of associates. There was Felicity, of course, and Mallory, when she was around and not chasing after a serial killer. I had no doubt that Leon would jump at the chance to help whenever he could. Maybe one day I’d trust the Blackwell sisters enough to call them part of my team, but for the moment, I wanted to keep them at arm’s length; Devon’s “vision,” whether real or a parlor trick, had unnerved me.

Two hours later, we arrived in Dearmont and Felicity parked outside Blackwell Books. She ran inside to get the foxglove paste from the witches while I waited and watched the darkening sky through the Land Rover’s windows. I hoped Mallory had those werewolves locked away. In about an hour’s time, the curse would take effect and force them to become monsters. After the first turn, they would be able to shift at will and be in total control of themselves in wolf form, except for on the nights of the full moon when the shift would be uncontrollable and the beast within savage.

The RV stopped alongside me and the window buzzed down. Leon leaned over Michael so he could speak to me. “Hey, Alec, what do you want us to do?”

“I want you to go home,” I said. “If I need you, I’ll call, okay?”

He looked disappointed but nodded and said, “Okay, man.” He disappeared from the window, which closed again. Michael gave me a nod and set off up the road.

Felicity returned a few minutes later with a jar of paste that was pale purple in color. She handed it to me as she got behind the wheel and I stashed it in the glove box.

“Those women look like they stepped out of the 1600s, but they seem nice enough,” she said as she turned the Land Rover around and headed out of town toward the Robinson place.

“Yeah, they’re very pleasant,” I said, thinking of Devon’s eyes rolling back in her head as she whispered, “
Empire of the Dead
.” I really should tell Felicity about that sometime, but now wasn’t that time.

Now was the time to save James Robinson and Sarah Silverman and kill the changelings that were trying to take over their lives.