Nemi might have swung the vote for him taking me along, but as we made our way down the hall to the stairs, I noticed Alistair kept himself between me and Faith. He didn’t trust me.
I couldn’t blame him. After all, his instincts were bang on.
They took me through one of the portals through hell to a garden.
A real garden that had flowers, trees, bushes, and comfortable seats. Our trip to the portal had picked up two more people—young men, identical to each other, with the lean muscles of runners, or dancers.
Or, maybe, something more like me. They moved in a way that was familiar—it spoke to their lethality, and I kept an eye on them.
I pushed aside a flowering vine that had invaded the path, and I batted at an insect that hovered in front of my face. It was fucking huge, a good two inches in length?—
Not length, but height… and it wasn’t an insect.
I stared in astonishment at a perfectly formed human body with wings. A male, but as I stood there, a female buzzed up beside him. They both gazed at Nemi on my shoulder, and then back at me.
“Off with you,” a female voice said. “Honestly, no one can visit this garden anymore without being harassed by Faeries.”
“We’re not harassing,” the male stated in a high, piping voice. “He has a hummingbird on his shoulder.”
He spoke to the woman who stepped clear from more of the vines. She had Aurora’s long white hair, but she appeared a bit older, and the eyes peering at me were a pure, unadulterated blue. “I can see that,” the Watcher stated. “But surely you have other things to do?”
The female giggled, and grabbed the male’s arm. The two of them flitted off into the foliage.
Faeries were real.Interesante.
It was a clear sign of just how far I’d come, that I filed that fact away with barely a hiccup. After the Dragons and Gryphons and whatever the hell Slade was, Faeries were just another weird creature.
The Watcher, however, was observant. “You’ve never met Faeries before?”
I sensed the pit opening beneath my feet. “They just surprised me, is all.”
Her eyes darted to Nemi. “Where did you get your little friend?”
“A market,” I lied. “I thought she would make a good pet.”
Her gaze was shrewd, and it made me uneasy as hell. It moved to something else—it took me a moment to realize she was staring at my earcuff.
“Faith can’t get a read on him at all,” Alistair rumbled. “And I don’t like that we were told by the council member where to find him.”
The Watcher nodded. “That is odd, no doubt about it.” Her gaze moved off the earcuff, to lock with mine. “What is your story, young man?”
I gave her the story Slade and I had concocted. “My extended family disowned me when I got angry and called the birds down on them. But my father had a friend on the council and called in a favor.”
Her eyes remained calm, but I guessed she was assessing me more than just visually. “Have you always been able to control birds?”
I shook my head. “Only recently. I don’t know how much I actually control them. They just come when I get pissed off.”
Her eyes returned to the earcuff. “Where did you get that?”
Somehow, I felt another lie would push me past some kind of threshold. “My grandmother gave it to me.”
The Watcher debated that for a moment. “Is she still among the living?”
How had she known? My stomach clenched. “No,” I answered.
The Watcher exhaled and held up her hand. Nemi immediately flew to her. The hummingbird and she stared at each other, and then Nemi twittered and nibbled at her finger with her long beak.
“Her name is Nemi.” I don’t know why I offered that tidbit. It just came out.
