“Don’t do anything rash, Wrenn!” Robin called. “You are a Goodfellow!”
She stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “Am I?” she said. Or am I Victorsdottir? she thought.
He chuckled. She looked over her shoulder.
Robin pulled out his phone and returned to swiping at the screen. “Remember where your debts lie.”
Every one of her cold bones twitched as if restacking themselves. Every nerve and popping joint shifted from attending to its own pain to looking outward at the pain coming.
She’d long wondered if this moment would come. If the fae treachery in which she lived would one day wrap its spindly fingers around her ankles and pull her so deep into its inky depths she no longer saw light.
Because that was the true test. Could she kick hard enough to surface again? Once she resurfaced, would she be able to offer a hand to the others drowning? If not, then why was she a paladin? Why did she wear a Royal Guard star?
Why did she stay with the fae?
Because in her two hundred years, she had done good for everyday fae. She’d solved many other vampire-related cases. She’d helped Rich and Lush several times with miscreants. She’d hauled countless terrible boggarts from the mundane world. She’d done what a lawgiver did.
But this…
She looked up at the rainbows dancing along the practice room’s ceiling. This might be a kelpie of a situation looking to make sure she drowned for good.
Robin reached over his shoulder and grabbed something she hadn’t noticed before. “Take this with you,” he said.
He’d been carrying Ed’s shotgun on his back this entire time? She walked back into the room, hand out, to take the gun.
Robin rotated his hand with the phone so she couldn’t see the screen as he held the gun perpendicular to them, with the barrel aimed at the doors and not either of them.
When she wrapped her hand around the stock, he didn’t let go. He glanced down at the gun and nodded ever so slightly.
Rainbows danced along every surface of the weapon—rainbows that were not from the refractions in the room, but could easily have been interpreted as such if he hadn’t clued her in.
She sighed and took the weapon. “Stealing from mundanes now, are we?” She checked the barrels and unloaded the shells. “Didn’t you at least check it first?”
He shrugged and went back to looking at his phone. “Go home,” he said, and shooed her away.
Wrenn turned her back on the fae she considered family and walked away.
Chapter 29
Wrenn Goodfellow sat at her kitchen table and watched the sunset cast pinks and golds through her sunroom windows. She’d fed her fish and watered her plants. Straightened up, too, and had a light meal when she got home. But mostly, she’d sat at the table staring at the sunroom threshold, waiting.
All of the syndicate-related files except the pixie vellum one were gone when she’d returned home, including her handwritten notes on the pad she’d kept on the table. And she’d logged into her Royal Guard account to find all of her draft reports also missing.
She checked the full Guard database. Her access to files and reports from the Queen’s realms had been restricted, which, it seemed, was a “mistake” on the part of the house brownies in charge of IT and would be fixed “shortly.”
Wrenn splayed her fingers over the one remaining bit of evidence left to her. The one remaining sheath of pixie vellum that, considering its overall worth, would have been the first thing she would have taken, if she’d been the one sent into a colleague’s home to retrieve documents. Because she was pretty damned sure Robin had sent in other Guard to desecrate her home.
So she watched the threshold, waiting. Because her gut said the cutting off of official channels wasn’t the only plan the royals had for silencing her.
The sun dropped behind the edge of the window. Dusk flowed into her sunroom all blue and mellow, and settled itself between the plants and the tanks. Her fish blinked. The windows popped a little as they cooled now that the sun no longer warmed their glass. But nothing untold unfolded. No spells manifested.
Victor did not appear.
Wrenn inhaled deeply as if she’d been holding her breath this entire time. The pixie vellum shimmered softly under her hand, and when she picked it up the sweet ballerina once again danced along its edge.
That sprite, the one who’d been sucked dry and tossed into the Titan River, had been a dancer. She’d twirled and pirouetted for the world with her wings fluttering and her magic spiraling around her body like some brilliant cartoon fairy.
She’d been innocence, that one.
Wrenn checked the vellum again. No family, though she did live with a troupe in Applebottom. Wrenn could, at least, give them some closure.
She slid the vellum into its protective sleeve and then into her satchel. And then, on a whim, placed Ed’s shotgun in the bag, too. Guns meant nothing in the fae realms. She still wanted it with her in case her place got another visitor while she was out.
She set her Royal Guard star on the table and locked the door behind her.
Lush was serving when she walked into the tavern. They hugged, and Lush thanked her for dealing with the kelpie even if the resulting damage had shut down their kitchen for a good week.
Wrenn took her coffee and made her way down the main street toward her adopted realm’s Heartway station. She’d purchased six Robin-free tokens when she left Oberon’s Castle. Robin’s tokens were on her skin, so they would go with her no matter where she walked, but she still had to at least attempt to be careful.
She dropped a token into her hand. The Heartway should leave her alone, and allow her free passage to Applebottom. She’d offer comfort and generalized handwaving toward justice, and then she’d excuse herself.
There were other vampires out there. Other problems. She’d put her star back on her belt and she’d
