“This is…” he hesitated over what to call him, “…a pain in my ass.”
“Only if you’re lucky,” the fae said toothily, fingering his whip. “You may call me Vasco.”
“Okay, Vasco.” I hit the kitchen for bottled water and tossed one to Midas. “You guys thirsty?”
Vasco slid his admiring gaze down Bishop from tip to toe. “Always.”
Grateful for the icy drink after our frantic run, I took long pulls from my bottle as I brought them each a water. Vasco sipped from his, but I worried for half a second Bishop was going to chuck his at Vasco’s pretty head.
After checking my phone, I came out and asked Bishop, “Any word from Linus and Grier?”
“They ought to be back in a few hours. Grier lost sight of him in a used bookstore.”
I read between the lines: Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut around Vasco.
“A few hours?” I played along. “More like a few days.”
The elevator chimed out in the hall, and I tossed my empty while selecting two more bottles. Since Midas and I hadn’t bothered shutting the door, Lisbeth and Ford invited themselves in.
“Hello,” she said, her eyes lighting on Vasco. “Are you a friend of Bishop’s?”
“It’s more accurate to say Bishop is a friend of mine,” Vasco all but purred. “Aren’t you a lovely trifle?”
A slight glaze covered her eyes, and Ford wrapped a hand around her upper arm before I noticed she was attempting to walk straight into Vasco’s arms.
“Stop playing with my friend,” I warned him and dipped my hand into Ambrose, unsheathing a sword. “If you can’t behave, you need to leave. Whether or not you do it with your head still attached is your choice.”
“He’s got information we need.” Bishop heaved a sigh. “Leave the head where it is, for now.”
“I knew you cared.” Vasco traced a finger down the center of Bishop’s chest, stopping when the tip brushed the metal of his belt buckle. “Do they know what this is costing you?”
“Leave them out of this.” Bishop fit his palm very gently across Vasco’s throat. “This is between us.”
“Yes.” His lids fluttered closed. “Us.”
“Don’t get cute with me.” Bishop leaned in close. “Do what you came here to do and then leave.”
“As you wish.” Vasco rested his palm over Bishop’s heart, smiled at what he felt there, then retreated. “All right, children.” He draped himself across the couch once more. “Gather ’round for story time.”
Given he might have been around to watch dirt born, I didn’t object to the insult. Out loud, anyway.
“You found an archive,” he began once we had formed a semicircle around him. “That’s remarkable, and I’m impressed you’re here to ask what it was that almost killed you.”
“An archive?” I reflected on what I had seen. “You’re saying that hole was an underground library?”
“Bishop tells me you consider that which the coven harvests to be skins, suits that can be worn and then returned to their collective closet. Not unlike what skinwalkers do, though theirs is a more violent path.”
There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Guess that grisly old chestnut applied to skinning people too.
“Information on witchborn fae is scarce,” I defended us. “We’ve done our best with what we’ve got.”
“That I don’t doubt.” He appeared earnest despite the sting of his words. “You’re wrong about the visages. They aren’t skins. They’re souls. Or, if you prefer, they’re essences. They’re the sum of the person. From the way they looked to the way they talked, laughed, walked, even breathed. The coven fully embodies those they have stolen. There are no spells capable of such lawful insanity, but there are worlds in which the dead walk and the souls linger.”
“The archive is a…portal?”
“Yes and no.” He smiled his maddening smile. “An archive is a gateway into a world where such things as these witchborn fae do is possible.”
A low growl vibrated in the air, barely loud enough for my ears, and Midas snarled, “You mean Faerie.”
“I do indeed.” Vasco picked lint off the cushion next to him. “Your coven doesn’t own a closet. They own a world. A corner of it. A pocket. More of a speck, really. Populated by the souls of all those they have taken.”
Bishop made a sound of annoyance that earned him a sigh from Vasco.
“For the sake of your necromancer,” he said to Bishop, “I will frame it in a way she will understand.”
“That would be nice,” I volunteered, happy to play dumb to get the full scoop.
“The coven summons what souls they want for any given task and then invokes a voluntary possession. They embrace those long-dead forms, absorb their thoughts and their feelings, before twisting the souls to suit their purpose.”
“That’s horrific.” Numbness spread through my hand where I clutched the sword, and I returned it to Ambrose before I did something embarrassing like drop it in front of Vasco. “How is it possible?”
“You couldn’t comprehend it if I explained it to you,” he said benignly, then flicked a wrist, “and I would never do that. Such abominations shouldn’t be encouraged, they’re a blight on all worlds, and I wouldn’t offer up the blueprints for free in any case.”
“He’s saying you would have stepped into Faerie—like the Faerie—if you had gone down those steps?” Lisbeth paled. “That’s… I mean… Wow.” She leaned against Ford. “I know it’s a real place, but an access point? That makes it really real. Too real.”
Understanding slammed into me with the force of a minotaur chasing after a red flag.
The witchborn fae had created actual routes to Faerie from Earth, and Natisha wanted witchborn fae hearts. Her avariciousness began to make more, and worse, sense. We figured she wanted to harvest power from the hearts, but this was next level. She must require a certain number of them to create her own passkey that would allow her to open their existing doors between our worlds rather than forge her own.
Yeah.
That made more sense.
Witchborn fae straddled
