Page 36 of Against the Veil (Endangered Fae #3)

That shut even Kara up, though it didn’t really answer the question.

Finn bounded up the front steps without waiting to see if they followed.

By the time Minky had scurried after everyone else, Finn had vanished.

One flight of steps inside led down to the ground level, but Finn’s boots clattered on the steps above.

She reached the eighth floor out of breath, wondering why no one ever installed elevators in these old apartment buildings.

“Dear lady!” Finn pounded on the right-hand door. “Please say you’re home for me? It’s Fionnachd.”

“ Dios , Finn.” The door opened and a little, white-haired lady peered out. “No need to make so much noise, caro . Come in, come in, and tell me why you are so out of breath.”

The grandmotherly woman looked so sweet, but power radiated from her in muted waves, like a five-hundred-watt bulb with a red cloth tossed over it.

An angry wasp buzz vibrated against Minky’s mind, a feeling she could only describe as a magic shield thrown up against her.

Minky shrank back to the wall by the stairs, suddenly too frightened to take another step.

“Do you know what you bring to me, Finn?” the woman asked softly.

“Oh, yes, your pardon.” Finn held out a hand toward them. “You know Kevin and Marcus, and this is Miss Kara. She is, from what I gather, a finder.”

“And the other, querido ? I have never…”

“I know. She’s faded again. It’s all right, Tia Carmen. She’s still there. This is my great-great-something-or-other granddaughter, Minky.”

“Your…oh, I see. Yours? Well, that explains things.” The shield abruptly vanished, the old woman’s power subsiding as if she had it on a switch. She nodded and beckoned with her hands. “Come in, come in. I am sorry I frightened you, pequena. I was not sure…you are so different.”

Still she couldn’t move. The casual display, from someone who could hold a conversation and maintain her appearance as a sweet old lady while the power crackled and sang around her, terrified her.

Finn faltered, one foot over the threshold. “Minky? Have you meant to do that?”

“Do what?” she said, her voice a bare squeak.

“You’ve disappeared entirely.” Finn reached a hand out to her, obviously aware of exactly where she was no matter how invisible. “That’s well done indeed.”

“Oh…um.” She managed to unfade a bit as she took his hand, whispering, “I didn’t know she’d be so scary.”

“ Tia Carmen?” He gazed down at her, forehead creased in a puzzled way. “Ah. I think you mistake power for threat, little one. Perhaps because you only feel the edges still.”

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes as she seldom did with anyone. “So I’m supposed to be able to tell if she’s a good witch or a bad witch?”

His laugh, sudden and delighted, made her face heat with embarrassment and yet somehow calmed her.

“Yes. Just so.” His long arm slung around her shoulders, his familiarity more comfortable now so she didn’t resist being herded into the apartment.

Finn’s voice held a hard edge when he spoke to the old lady again.

“We are here to stand against him. He will come, to do as he has other places. I came to warn you, but I think you know.”

Tia Carmen wiped at her kitchen counter, her eyes glistening. “Our poor Santiago. When you called the first time, caro , I hoped that it was a fever dream, or somehow you had made a mistake.”

“I have wished the same, fervently. Or that I might awake and laugh with him over my terrible dream.” Finn folded her in his arms. “I have not woken.”

“You’ve come to ask me to help you?”

He kissed the old lady’s forehead gently. “No. I only ask that you protect what is yours. If he comes here…simply don’t allow it. He will try. But you mustn’t allow it.”

“You worry, mi cuervo , that I will be sentimental and wish to help him.”

“I worry that he will charm his way to you and carry you off as he did Lugh.”

“ El principe is too honorable and too trusting. Old ladies are more devious. Finn, go. I will hold here. Go do what you must.”

Just like that, they were done. The conversation hadn’t made any damn sense to Minky and left more questions than they answered.

Finn herded them back out without explanation, moving them down the street on foot.

He seemed in a desperate hurry now, looking over his shoulder every few steps as they raced down Twenty-Third Street.

“Shannon!” Kevin barked out. “Where the hell are you headed?”

“Fifth Avenue. All the shops!” Finn shouted back. “He’s coming. Gods of pool and spring… I feel him…”

He stopped so suddenly, Kara ran into him, but he merely steadied her as he stared at the top of Tia Carmen’s building. A strange, isolated wind blew across that roof, leaves and bits of paper whirled about in ever-increasing frenzy.

“He seeks to come through there. The place most familiar to him. To win Tia Carmen to his side if he can.”

The leaves danced and shifted in confusion as a second whirlwind arose in opposition to the first, an unnatural, ominous cloud gathering over that one isolated rooftop.

“She bars the way. She will not let him come through there. Not on her block. He will grow frustrated and angry when he cannot overpower her, then he will target the street where all the merchants have their wares.”

They stood transfixed for another moment, as the second whirlwind held back the first.

“You shall not pass,” Minky whispered, though she hoped to God that Diego hadn’t found a balrog somewhere.

“Come! Now!” Finn’s shout got them moving again, this time at a dead run toward one of Brooklyn’s most commercial streets. A shriek sounded behind them, most likely a displacement of air, but it sounded too much like a scream of frustrated rage for comfort.

They turned the corner at Fifth Avenue just in time for Finn to spot the beginnings of another magical doorway on a rooftop two blocks south of where the White Eagle Tavern had once been. He pointed, eyes wild with anxiety. “Kevin!”

“I see it, bud. Let us take point but stay close.”

The run turned into a sprint with Minky falling further behind with each yard. Running was never something she enjoyed doing, and trying to keep up with three adrenaline-charged males twice her size just wasn’t in her small bag of talents.

A young man suddenly strode out into the middle of the street near the rooftop doorway.

Tires screeched. Horn blares and obscenities followed his passage.

He ignored the angry motorists, lifted a hand, and fire blossomed from an empanada vendor across the street.

The lady manning the cart shrieked, backpedaling from the sudden mini-inferno.

Half a block closer, a lamppost twisted in a screech of tortured metal and crashed to the pavement.

That seemed to be the signal for all hell to break loose.

Shoppers screamed and snatched up children, people ran away from the escalating violence and some, inexplicably, toward it.

A parked car tipped on its side. The sharp shatter of glass echoed and repeated along the street.

Hard to tell after five minutes who Diego had sent to start the riot and who were the local magic users acting out of panic.

Kevin had reached ground zero, where the riot had begun, and took aim with his tranq pistol at the young pyromancer who had retreated to their side of the street.

Marcus had raced to the other side, in hot pursuit of the skinny girl who appeared to be doing most of the window breaking with her magic.

They said to stay close. How can we stay close if they split up? Minky’s thought was a frantic wail in her own head.

As she tried to decide which way to run, a black and gray blur shot out of the alley beside her and, with an inhuman howl, knocked Kevin flat.

A few yards in front of her, Finn snarled and leaped at the girl who was now punching Kevin in the head.

Werewolf. No, no, no, Finn can’t take on a werewolf!

She knew she had faded into invisibility and didn’t care. Werewolf girl turned at Finn’s snarl and backhanded him hard enough to send him flying. He landed on his back on the sidewalk, apparently stunned.

Glass-shatter girl had evaded Marcus when Pyro-boy had set a florist’s display ablaze right next to him. The girl watched Finn from across the street with narrowed eyes, turned her attention to the burning empanada cart and clenched her fists at her sides.

The heavy pull of magic itched at Minky’s skin, wild power that yanked in bits from everything around her.

The cart wobbled and lifted six feet off the ground.

It hovered there for an instant, a bizarre parody of the sun’s burning chariot.

Then the girl let out a high-pitched cry and the cart flew toward them as if a giant hand had pitched it right at Finn.

Finn…no! Minky’s panic rushed through her, filling her body, numbing her mind.

Unable to think, she acted on instinct alone, racing the few steps to Finn.

The tingling rush coalesced, surging up her arms, and shooting from her outstretched hands.

A wall of air smacked into the cart mid-street, powerful enough to stop its forward momentum and knock it to the pavement.

The crew Diego had obviously sent had vanished by the time she looked around again, her heart pounding in shock.

The gathered power on the rooftop had winked out, so he must have retrieved them and snapped the doorway shut.

They’d done their job, though. The street was in chaos and she had to grab Finn under the arms and haul him back into a doorway to save him from being trampled.

Kara had a dazed Kevin sitting against a shop wall nearby and Marcus was fighting through the panicked crowd to get back to them.

“I think…” Finn began in a faint voice, shaking his head as if he needed to clear water from his ears. “That we’ve seen one way to unblock your channels.”

“What?” she said in a distracted fashion as she helped him stand.