Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel (32 page)

What about belief? I believed I had a role to play in this, that I could stop this war from happening, that no matter the personal cost, it would be worth it.

Something flared to life behind my eyes. It was like breaking through cellophane with my fingertips. Grian hadn’t just rattled around in my brain, she’d portioned certain parts of it off.

I suddenly remembered: I’d made a bargain with the Arbiter. I’d found out how the doorways were opening; I just had to prove that Grian was behind it.

There’d be time later to consider the implications. Right now I had a doorway to close and some brownies to trap. I extended a hand as I reached the cardboard box and sent my magic out with my breath.

Nothing. The doorway wasn’t there anymore. That bitch had drawn it somewhere else. Behind me, a spate of mad giggling.

I closed my eyes and let out the last of my breath.

It was like opening another eye. Suddenly, I was aware of exactly where the doorway was. Two steps behind me to my right.

As if in a dream, I took the two steps, reached out, and closed the doorway. I opened my eyes.

“Got it,” Kailen said. He had a sweater wrapped around his hand, and held a brownie between his fingers. It squirmed, trying to bite through the sweater. “The other two went through the doorway, but as soon as I saw what you were trying to do, I came out to help.”

I held up his watch. “It’s not clicking.”

His eyes narrowed as he realized the implication. “A spy. One of Grian’s,” he said. “One of mine.” He brought the brownie level with his face. “Tell me, little one, what did she send you here for?”

“Mustn’t tell anyone,” it said in its raspy voice. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl.

Kailen drew himself tall. “I am part of the family you’re beholden to. Obey, or I will cast you from our protection.”

“You don’t have the power.”

“Are you certain of that? Or would you like to test your theory?”

The brownie stopped struggling. It jerked its head in my direction, its wild brown hair flipping back with the movement. “We were to watch this one, and report back to the Queen what she did.”

“Anne,” I said. “The secretary. What did you do with her?”

The creature smiled, showing a multitude of sharp white teeth. “It is not my duty to respond to a Changeling.”

Kailen squeezed and the brownie let out a yelp. “You will answer her.”

It panted. “Very well. We led the woman out here. We led her through the doorway, into Grian’s realm. When Grian was finished with her, we brought her back.”

They brought her back in pieces.

“The prince must understand, we were doing this on her orders.”

Kailen opened his fist, letting the brownie drop to the pavement. It landed on its feet. “Oh, I know. I know and understand, better than I’d like. I’m letting you go. You can find your way back to the Fae world on your own.”

The brownie hissed, showing all its teeth, and then disappeared in a blur of little feet and matted hair.

“My mother—” Kailen paused, swallowed. “Grian is completely, utterly mad. A war with the humans would be disastrous. She can’t just walk in and subjugate everyone. Magic is strong, but it has its limits. It will be a long, protracted war, with losses on both sides.”

I sidled closer to him. “And who do you think would win?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice quiet. “We have to stop it from happening.”

“Come on. Let’s go to your place, look at the watch. Is there a way to prove that she made it?”

Kailen headed for the car. “If we can unmake it when the Fae try to attack the prison, if we can get them to listen, we may be able to show Grian’s hand in all of this.”

I slid into the passenger side and shrugged. “Honestly? It’s kind of a shitty plan.”

“You have something better?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

As Kailen drove, I inspected the watch. The face of it had a small time keeper in the upper right, an analog clock. The rest of it was taken up with a series of gears and a little window. It was, at the moment, blank.

“So how accurate is it?”

“It can be vague sometimes, but it’s never failed me.”

“Pretty piece of machinery.” Somewhere inside it was a mechanism that opened doorways. How was this even possible?

“Grian’s the best there is at crafting, possibly the best there ever was. I don’t know what she fears, either. To me, she seemed invincible. But there may be a clue to its unmaking inside of it.”

This wasn’t going to be easy then. But as Dorian had said, every crafted item had a weakness. The watch had one too. We just had to find it. “I was in her mind, briefly, in the Arena.”

“What did you see?”

I shrugged. “Not much.” And since I couldn’t think of what else to do, I touched the metal and again was thrown into the Void.

Dark. Cold. No sensation at all.

Last time, I’d sensed something else. Something blue. I tried to press onwards, to search the emptiness for what I’d felt before. But I couldn’t feel my legs, or my feet, or my body. I was nothing. I was the Void. My mind started to drift away.

I awoke to Kailen’s hands on my shoulders. “Nicole!”

I tried to speak and couldn’t. My lips were numb, my body shaking uncontrollably. “What happened?” I managed finally.

He rubbed my arms, his hands making my skin tingle. “You touched the watch again. Damn it! You need to tell me when you’re going to do something like that. I don’t know why it does this to you. You stopped breathing for a second. I had to pull over.”

“I was in the Void again,” I whispered. “Every time I touch it, it takes me to the Void. This time was longer.”

“You shouldn’t touch it.” He pulled me against his chest. Slowly, the shivers left me. “Let me look at the watch. Let me try to figure out how to unmake it. It’s my fault the doorways are open. I should be the one to make sure this stops.”

“It’s Grian’s fault, not yours.” It felt so good to be held right now. There was nothing sexual about it, just someone giving a damn about whether I lived or died or was hurt.

He pulled away from me. “Sometimes logic can’t override feelings. I think we’ve got a few days before the Fae launch their raid. Let’s see what we can do with that time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The apartment hadn’t changed a bit. I’m not sure why it even occurred to me that it might have changed. Maybe because Kailen and I had slept together? But that was stupid. We’d only slept together last night—I couldn’t expect Kailen to dash over here and take down all the pictures of him and Penny before I arrived.

Awkward to the max.

Even more awkward? He didn’t seem to notice, in the least, that this was awkward. So he grabbed for my hand as he led me down the hall (I was beginning to think of the barrage of pictures as “The Gauntlet”). He brushed back my hair when I sat on his living room couch. When I held out my wrist for him to remove his watch, his fingers lingered over mine.

I pulled away. “If I can’t touch it, how do we figure out how to unmake it?”

Kailen opened a drawer in his coffee table and brought out a plastic box that rattled as he set it down. “I’ve had to repair it a couple times.” Inside the box was a multitude of tiny metal tools. “This time I’m going to take it apart.”

Well, that sounded easy. “So won’t that unmake it?”

“Nope. I won’t be able to get all the parts off. Grian will have placed wards, tooled things to make undoing the crafting more difficult. There’s the physical part of the watch—the gears, the face, the band. And then there’s the magical part. I can pick apart the physical components, and this may weaken the crafting. But it won’t break it.”

He took a tiny silver screwdriver and began to remove screws from the back.

“So what do I do? Sit around and look pretty?”

He gave me an appraising look. “No. Not that you don’t look nice, but you’re a Changeling. The watch affects you differently. There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the doorways. Since you’re the only one who can open and close them at will, I need you to tell me if you sense anything while I’m fiddling with the watch. I can’t sense a doorway to save my life.”

I slid onto the plush rug beneath the coffee table, leaned my elbows on it, and watched Kailen work.

It was interesting for the first thirty minutes or so. Once he got the back off, he started to remove gears—tiny, delicate things, like the lace on a dragonfly’s wings. But I might as well have been watching a kid dig holes in the ground for all the magical sensing I was doing. I didn’t feel a thing. I started to trace patterns on the table’s surface and attempt small talk with Kailen.

“Growing up with Grian must have really sucked.”

“Mmph.”

“What
was
your childhood like? Did she even play with you?”

“A little.”

“Did you decide to join the Guardians, or did she push you into it?”

Grunt.

“Did you ever see her making that watch?”

He gave me a long look, pins between his teeth, tiny screwdriver in his hand.

“Guess not.”

Kailen crouched over the watch again and prodded at its innards. As soon as he poked it,
something
shimmered in the air above the watch.

I lifted my head from my palms, all boredom vanished. “Stop. Something just happened.”

“Thought so.” He put down the screwdriver, removed the pins from his mouth, and placed both hands on the watch. “There’s a ward on this part. It could take a while to remove. Why don’t you go grab us some lunch?” He nodded his head in the direction of the keys on the coffee table. “Get whatever you like. I’ll eat most anything.”

I pursed my lips. “You don’t want me around for this part.”

“I need silence in order to concentrate. It won’t be easy. And I
am
hungry.”

I picked up the keys with a sigh and headed out the door, trying to ignore Penny’s smiling face all down the hallway. No hard feelings against the woman, but I wondered if Kailen would notice if I turned them to face the wall. I’d slept with a few people, in college, but never encountered this sort of problem. Did it have to do with age? Did everyone thirty-two and older have to contend with the not-so-apparition-like ghosts of former relationships?

I ended up swinging by my favorite Thai place and grabbing two orders of pad thai. It was mild, and pleasing enough to most palates. I’d considered grabbing something unbearably spicy for Kailen, just to watch him make good on his eat most anything claim, but I was starting to think that needling him wasn’t the best way to get us to work together.

Something pricked at the edge of my senses as I approached Kailen’s door. A cold drip at the back of my spine and the brief impression of blue. I fumbled and dropped the keys in my haste to open the door.

“Damn it!” Behind that door, things had gone wrong.

I pushed it open and dropped the bag of takeout to the floor. From the entryway, I saw Kailen’s feet on the rug, the toes pointing toward the ceiling. I dashed into the living room to find him flat on his back, eyes closed, the fingers of one hand open, the watch on the floor next to him. His face was fixed in a grimace. He was breathing—quick shallow breaths, as if he was in some sort of pain. When I knelt by him and put a hand to his chest, his heartbeat fluttered beneath my palm. “Kailen.” I shook him, I whispered in his ears, I pinched him. He didn’t wake up, his jaw clenched, his eyes closed tight.

I breathed in and used my magic to probe the air. There was a link, between Kailen and the watch. It felt tenuous as a frayed piece of yarn, but no matter how I pushed or pulled at it, I couldn’t break that link. It left the scent of sandalwood on the roof of my mouth. I frowned. Not Grian’s magic. Kailen’s breathing quickened once more and then stopped altogether.

I didn’t have a choice. I touched the watch.

This time, the Void was filled with a presence—all blue and sandalwood.

Are you the one who put me in here?
A voice came from the depths, deep and masculine.

“No. Whoever you are, you’re hurting my friend. You have to stop.”

It could be him. It could be you
.

“Please, let him go!”

No
.

If I didn’t stop this man, spirit, ghost, whatever—he was going to kill Kailen. Time seemed to pass a little differently in the Void, and in the mortal world, Kailen wasn’t breathing. How long could a person go without oxygen before they started suffering some sort of brain damage?

I threw everything I had into the blue presence—my anger, my fear, my belief. A bright light appeared and hurtled into the Void, at the same time pushing me backwards. “Let him GO!”

I flew up against something like an invisible spiderweb, but larger, stronger. Somewhere just beyond that, my mortal body waited. I struggled, but nothing gave way. Had my body stopped breathing, like Kailen's had? The thought lent me an extra burst of strength. I focused what little emotion I had left and aimed it at the web.
Please, please work
. The bright light shone in my eyes.

And then I was back in my own body, in the mortal world. Kailen was next to me, on the rug, and as I watched, he sucked in an enormous breath.

I'd done it. This was better than making a hundred sales. Before I knew it, I had my hands on his chest, his arms, his face, checking for signs of injury. “What happened? Are you okay?”

It took him a moment to recover. His eyes were wide; I could see the whites around his irises. “That is not just a crafted watch,” he said. “It's a trap.”

“For us?”

He looked at me. “No. For you. For Changelings.”

For Changelings. The blue presence, the voice—not part of the trap, but a result of it. I was not the first Changeling Grian had encountered. “What has she done?” I whispered.

“She's enslaved one of the Fae,” Kailen said. “Placed him inside this watch. And not just any Fae. Merlin.”

My mind reeled. I'd grown up among humans, but the sense of wrongness that pierced my breast came from my Fae side. For one Sidhe to enslave another, and for so long—I didn't need a lawyer to tell me this was a terrible crime. Human lives were short in comparison. What would it be like for torment to last a millennium? “He's gone mad, hasn't he? That's why he attacked you.”