“It’s safer for you if you don’t know,” shesaid.
I pinned her to the wall. She didn’t resist,glaring at me with nostrils flaring. I pressed her flush againstthe brick with my forearm and leaned in close. “I don’t have anyreason not to turn you in here unless I know what’s going on.”
“Then turn me in,” Leandra said, voicecracking. “Betray me.”
“Stop being dramatic.” I was tempted to askif the reason she’d been so cuddly and friendly recently was sothat I’d take her side when it came between me and my people—buttruthfully, I didn’t want to know if that was the case, because itwould really hurt my feelings to know everything had been fake.
“I didn’t think they would move thisquickly. Listen, Olympia,” she said, shifting against my arm, “ifyou get me something from the coffee shop or find a way to reallytrap me here, I’ll be under the court’s custody, right? They won’tlet outside forces reach me because I’ll owe a debt of imprisonmentto the Unseelie Queen of Chicago.”
“Is Patricia coming after you?” I asked.“She’d even follow you to Faerie? How would she know to come here?She doesn’t know anything about me.”
Leandra laughed against my forearm, herthroat bobbing. “We have files on everyone, you fool. I don’t knowwho’s after me, but I’m sure they’re being very persuasive.”
“What,” I repeated, “are they after youfor?”
“If it’s more important for you to know thanto help me, then just let me go.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. How could she askme to trust her when we’d repeatedly lied to each other? When shewas hiding things from me even now? If I’d known from the startthat she was going to witches asking to be made truly immortal, I’dhave been able to turn her down and not put my life on the linewithout choosing to. “It’s really better to be a prisoner here thana prisoner back at home?”
“I’ll be a prisoner here,” she said. “I’llbe executed there.”
Adrenaline flooded my system. Thatsituation, at least, let me pick a side. “I don’t have anywhere tohide you,” I said.
“Can we go back to the human world? No,actually, they’ll be looking for me in the real Chicago. They’llhave thought that through. We need—where’s that bell of yours?”
“We can’t use that. Everyone will hear itand know we’re trying to travel far away. Fairies are sensitive tobells.”
“Oh my God! So there’s nothing,then.” She glanced upward at the roof of the building, and thenback the way we’d came, at the peaks of the castle glimmering inthe moonlight. “Will you help me?” she asked.
I felt a pang of guilt. There was no realreason to help her, other than that we’d been fucking around witheach other. The logical part of my brain that worked on bountyhunting made it simple for me: if the cost outweighed the result,don’t go for that mark. There would be other postings that weren’tas risky.
Leandra noticed my hesitation. “I’m going toturn myself in,” she said. “And you’re my best bet for someone whocares enough about me to try to help me out of it. This is about toget a lot messier.”
“How could it possibly be messier thanthis?” I asked.
Leandra thrust the arm that was pinning herto the wall away and pressed me closer to her with her hand at thesmall of my back. Her soft lips brushed mine, trembling a bit withfear or anxiety.
It was like a goodbye.
A tear dripped down my cheek and onto herdress.You can’t say goodbye when we haven’t even had a chanceto start,I thought.
Leandra knocked me away with such force thatI fell flat on my ass in the alley, tailbone stinging. She made adash for the opening and turned left, away from the castle. “Here Iam!” I heard her shout faintly, followed by the pounding of theguards’ boots.
I stood from the ground, a thumb absentlyrubbing the soft lining of the jacket Leandra had gifted me as areplacement. There was no one who could hide in Faerie from thefairies themselves, slippery vampire included, so I headed not inLeandra’s direction but back toward the castle, rubbing my sore assand passing people who whispered to each other urgently, whocatalogued the guards’ actions with knowledge that they would havegood gossip for years to come.
My muscles were tense with adrenaline, but Ididn’t rush to the castle, not wanting to gain any unwantedattention and knowing Leandra would give them a hearty chase beforethey caught her. I felt the weight of dozens of gazes onme—watching me as the woman who brought this discord home fromoutside, this corruption.
I wondered if I, too, had overstayed mywelcome here.
The guards let me in without a word. Thefoyer was packed with people, the steward giving out orders, thequeen quietly fanning herself in a corner talking to herladies-in-waiting. I slid in next to my mother. “Hi,” I said.
“They’ve caught her,” she said. “They’reexpecting her back any minute.”
“I figured.”
“Olympia, honey.” Mom looked at me withconsternation, but I thought there was a hint of empathy, rightunder the surface. She sighed, brushing a bundle of silky hair thathad come loose away from her face. There was nothing to say.
A few minutes later, they brought Leandrain. Her body had gone limp against the three guards who dragged herand she looked worse for the wear, with a bloody lip and her legscoated in mud.
