Bayou Moon

This wasn’t going to end well, she just knew it.

THREE

WILLIAM leaned against the wall of his house. The two people in the yard watched him. If they found his toy army odd, they kept it to themselves.

The wild inside him snarled and growled, scraping at his insides with sharp claws. He held it in check. The images of dead children tore open an old scab, but anger would do him no good now. He’d run across the Mirror’s agents during his time in the Red Legion. Rules didn’t apply to them, and he’d learned quickly that turning his back on them wasn’t a good idea. You screwed with those guys at your own peril, knowing that your next breath might come with a knife in it.

William didn’t know what these two would do or why they came to bother him, and so he watched them the way a wolf watched an approaching bear: no hint of movement, no sign of weakness, no snarling. He wasn’t afraid, but he had no reason to provoke them. If a reason did present itself, he wouldn’t hesitate to rip out their throats.

The two people from the Mirror made no move either. Erwin stood on the left. Of the two, he seemed like the bigger threat. Most people would forget Erwin a minute after they’d met him. Of average height, average build, he had an unremarkable face and short hair, either dark blond or light brown. His voice was mild, his manner unassuming, and his scent was so saturated with magic that the whole place stank like a pastry shop the day before Thanksgiving. The way he held himself, loose, deceptively carefree, didn’t bode well either.

The woman next to Erwin was a good deal older. Short, thin, ramrod straight, with skin the color of coffee, she wore a blue gown like it was armor. The gown’s skirt split down the sides, showing gray pants and supple boots, letting the woman move fast if she needed to.

Her braided hair sat in a complex mess on her head. Her face drew the eye. She had dark eyes, black, sharp, and merciless. The eyes watched him with eerie intensity. Like being tracked by a bird of prey, cold and ready to kill. The woman’s scent filtered down to William, a layered amalgam of perfume: blackberry, vetiver, orange, rosemary, roses. An in-your-face fragrance. She was in charge and wanted people to know it.

Erwin was a heavy hitter, and the way he hovered near the woman gave him away. The man acted as a bodyguard. Since he had no visible weapons, he had to be a flasher. Anyone with magic could learn to channel their power into a flash, a concentrated stream that looked like a ribbon of lightning—and if it was bright enough, it seared like one, too.

William shifted, a light transfer of weight from one foot to the next, and hid a smile when Erwin tensed in response. As a changeling, William had no flash, but he’d spent enough years in a unit full of superb flashers. If Erwin flashed pale blue or white, he was likely a blueblood or extremely talented, like Rose. If he managed a green or a yellow, he wasn’t very high up the food chain.

The hotter Erwin’s flash, the higher up the ladder of command the woman was. No sense wasting a good flasher to guard a mid-level paper pusher.

“Can you flash?” William asked.

Erwin offered him a mild smile.

“He wants to know who he is dealing with,” the woman said. “You have my permission to demonstrate.”

Erwin inclined his head to her and looked at William. “Name the target.”

“Wasp nest, twenty feet to the left, on the oak. Second branch up.”

It would have to be a hell of shot to hit that damn thing. Declan probably could, but he’d blow half the tree away with it.

Erwin turned. “Ah.”

A white glow drenched his eyes. Tiny tendrils of white lightning sparked off his right hand and flared, combining into a current. A beam of pure white shot from him, severing the wasp nest in half, as if with a knife.

Erwin wasn’t just a flasher. He was a sniper. Figured.

“You’ve heard of Virai,” the woman said.

Most Red Legionnaires knew of Virai. The Red Legion did black ops, so when the Mirror needed muscle and raw numbers, they tapped the Red Legion first. Virai was the head of the Mirror, the power behind the agency. His name was whispered.

“Sure.”

The woman raised her chin. “I am Virai.”

William blinked. “The Virai?”

“Yes. You may call me Nancy, if you would like.”

Nancy. Right. “Why did you bring me pictures of dead children?”

“Because you have spent the last two years living here, safe and cozy. You needed a reminder of who you are.”

Arrogant crone. William bared his teeth in a slow wolf smile. “Your pet sniper won’t stop me. I’ve taken his kind before.” In his mind William leapt over his action figures, hit Erwin, breaking his neck on the way down, rolled …

“Perhaps,” Nancy said. “But can you take two at once?”

Her eyes blazed with white. Magic unfurled from her in a glowing shroud, held for a long breath, and vanished.

The imaginary attack died as imaginary William got sliced in two by Nancy’s flash. They had him. One superior flasher he could handle. Between the two of them, they would mince him into pieces before he got his fingers around anyone’s throat.

William crossed his arms. “What is it you want?”

The woman raised her head. “I want you to go deeper into the Edge and find Spider. I want you to take away the object he’s looking for and bring it to me. If you kill him, I would consider it a bonus.”

Well, he did ask. “Why me?”

“Because he knows my agents. He knows the way they think, and he kills them. You’ve tangled with him twice and survived. So far, it’s a record.” She locked her teeth, making the muscles on her jaw stand out. “Spider is the worst kind of enemy. He’s a true believer, convinced that he’s serving a higher cause. He won’t stop until he’s dead.”

“And you’re here because you don’t want to waste your people hunting him,” William said. As a changeling, he was expendable. Nothing new there.

Nancy’s voice cracked like a whip. “I’m here, because of all of the operatives available to me, you are the best man for the job and I can’t suffer another failure. I can’t compel you to help me. I have no authority over you. I can only ask.”

If that was the way she asked, he hated to hear what her order sounded like.

She did ask all the same. That was new. He’d been given orders all his life. Declan was the only one who bothered to ask him anything. The dumb blueblood insisted on treating him as if he were a real person. Still, William reflected, he had a comfortable life. Asking alone wouldn’t pry him free from it—but they also brought Spider to the table. The knowledge that the child murderer was within his reach would eat at him now, burrowing like a tick under his skin, until it would drive him crazy. He had to kill the man. It was the last bit of unfinished business he had. He’d murder Spider, taste his blood, and come back here without a weight on his soul.

Go deeper into the Edge, huh? The Edge wrapped the junction of two worlds all the way from one ocean to another, widening and narrowing whenever it felt like it. Sometimes it was three miles deep, sometimes fifty. “Where in the Edge is Spider?”

“In the swamps,” Erwin said. “West of here, the Edge narrows down almost to nothing and then abruptly widens to encompass an enormous swamp the locals call the Mire. We estimate it to be at least six hundred square leagues, perhaps bigger.”