She’d almost pummeled Robin’s hip, and a kick from her did damage, even to a powerful fae.
“You dusted my lead, Robin.” She offered her hand to help him stand.
He nodded and pulled himself to standing. “The boss sniffed a vampire in his realms,” he said as he smoothed his jacket.
Being a freewheeling Seelie, he would rather prance around naked than in Oberon’s new dress requirements.
“Here, of all places!” He shook his head in his melodramatic way. “We’d long suspected they’d try. Turned out turning a dark fae really was the easiest.” He snapped his fingers.
“So you were expecting that kelpie?”
Robin looked hurt. “Of course. We figured they’d go after a witch or two first, as well.” He waved his hand at the greater air of Oberon’s Castle. “I wove detection spells into the witch fire uptake infrastructure a long time ago.”
Wrenn stared stone-faced at her mentor. “And here I’m the vampire hunter,” she said.
Robin rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so sarcastic.” He fiddled with one of his silver buttons. “I mean, it’s all so obvious.” He waved his hands. “Your photos helped, of course.”
No, it wasn’t obvious.
In fact, it was so not obvious she had a strong suspicion that he was lying. “What other structural obviousness have I been missing, Robin? Since I’m just a witch of unknown origin.”
He pouted like a scolded puppy. Then he grinned and pointed at her nose. “You don’t overheat when you cast spells.” He said it as if he was revealing information she didn’t already know. “Strange and sturdy witch that you are.”
“And?” she asked.
He leaned toward her as if to tell her a secret. “That means you’re difficult to detect while here at home.”
Oh, no, she thought. He had just shared a secret. He considered her family, but he was still fae, and a powerful one at that.
Now she owed him.
Robin had asked if she wanted a suppression spell for her flashbacks the moment he found her in that dark frozen Scottish forest. He’d sniffed at her person as if he’d detailed every pheromone and fear her body radiated. His eyes had rounded. Then he’d offered multiple gifts of help.
At the time, she hadn’t realized who she was dealing with. She only saw a young man, a kid really, who’d been out hunting to help his family. She hadn’t wanted to impose on people who were likely living day-to-day. She’d seen too many starving children on the streets of Edinburgh.
Robin had told her later that her selflessness had saved her from his worst tricks.
And with that bit of truth, that tiny bit of revelation, he’d given her a fae boon that tied them together. There was a strange sort of trust between them that had been traded as opposed to earned, but it was there. She literally saw it in his magic every time they were together.
When he’d found her, she also hadn’t realized what the shimmer she saw around him meant—or what she was.
She knew now, and she used the tactical advantage it gave her every single time she found herself in the presence of a magical—fae, elf, kami, loa, or spirit.
His natural magic pulsed outward, then pulled in closer to his body like armor.
The seeing-magic part of her particular witchdom did have its benefits. “Why do you do that, Robin?” she asked. “The tricks?”
He bunched up his lips and crinkled his nose as if reacting to the imaginary stink of a social slight. “You’re so… closed off, Wrenn. These emotions of yours are going to get you killed.” He rubbed at his belly before yanking on his jacket hem.
He didn’t answer her question.
“Yes, yes. Use my emotions. Don’t let them use me,” Wrenn said. They’d had this conversation many times in the past two centuries. “I know.”
He tossed her a flicker of side-eye.
She knew what that look meant, as well: The boss had not approved of her adventure last night. Oberon never approved.
So she changed the subject. “I think we have a blood syndicate operating in Oberon’s Castle,” she said. “Sprites keep washing up, Robin. That kelpie might not be the only vamped-out dark fae walking the realms.”
Robin flipped between seemingly hating the constrictions of Oberon’s new militaristic dress code and loving the fact that he now had lots and lots of silver bits on his clothes for fiddling and trading.
He stopped playing with his buttons and looked at her. “One kelpie who got himself into a bad situation does not a syndicate make,” he said. “You know how dark fae work.”
“They’re haphazard,” she said. “Until someone powerful spins them up into a circuit.” Or a syndicate.
Robin’s eyebrow arch turned into narrowed eyes and pinched lips.
“I think he is part of it.”
“That he?” He stepped closer and mimed a massive, hulking, fanged demon. “You sure?”
“When are my hunches wrong, Robin?” She rubbed the shoulder she’d used to flip him on his ass.
Robin stared at the light dancing over the doors. “Your hunches are no more statistically significant than anyone else’s and you know it.”
The modernization of the fae caused interesting science and magic overlaps. The use of statistics, Oberon’s Castle public transit, fae wifi and telecommunications—they’d all appeared in the last fifteen years. All of which felt as if Oberon was readying the fae for something.
Robin didn’t like it. Once, while drunk, he’d muttered something about privacy and mundanes and a concept called “late stage capitalism.” Then he’d downed another jug of mead and thrown up outside the tavern.
He’d still use the tools it offered, though.
He turned toward the sunlit doors and his goat hooves clopped against the wood floor. “Tell me your hunch, Wrenn,” he said.
“You know I watch vampiric movements in the mundane world.”
He nodded. “Which watching are you talking about?” he asked. “The watching that’s part of your job,
