Page 17 of Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

17

R ebecca tensed and waited, expecting the entire space between buildings to come crashing down around them at any second.

The echoing rumble filling the alley was so loud, it was amazing no civilians heard it on their way past and stopped to check the alley. The ground trembled. The brick walls pulled away from each other to reveal a section not remotely visible until this whole thing started.

Rowan looked over his shoulder at her again with a beaming grin before wiggling his eyebrows.

What the hell had he gotten them into now?

The second Rebecca realized it was time to prepare for the worst, the walls stopped moving and the ominous rumbling cut off. Then, from within the darkness between the separated alley walls, a head appeared.

A very old head belonging to a very old elf, from the looks of him.

He was incredibly tall and had to stoop to look through the door. The stiff, equally tall top hat resting snugly over his short brown hair probably didn’t help.

At first, it seemed the elf’s head had appeared out of nowhere, but then Rebecca recognized the strangely camouflaged door opening just a little wider to reveal nothing but thick blackness on the other side.

The elf peered farther out, squinting dubiously. When he saw Rebecca standing there a few yards away, he opened his mouth as if to question her before his gaze fell on Rowan. What had first seemed like curiosity morphed in an instant into sheer terror when the older elf gentleman recognized the much younger Blackmoon Elf before him.

Rowan grinned.

The old man’s eyes widened, and he stuttered several times before finally managing to spit out his words. “Oh no, no, no. Absolutely not. Not now, not ever! I am not talking to you!”

He scrambled backward to shove the door shut again, but Rowan slipped his foot through the doorway to prop that camouflaged door open with the side of his boot.

“A pleasure to see you again, Mr. Kaplan,” he crooned. “You’re right, it has been a while.”

“No, no, this can’t be happening,” the elf murmured. “Now you just listen here. None of that was supposed to happen. I cannot—no, I will not be held liable for the results or any outlying side effects. You pass that along. I want nothing more to do with it.”

Mr. Kaplan fumbled several times to force the door shut again, but he hadn’t seemed to realize Rowan’s foot was the thing preventing him from the desired result. He banged the door against Rowan’s boot several times, furiously shaking his head and muttering under his breath, too flustered to fully understand what the problem was.

Rebecca’s widened her eyes before she centered her gaze on Rowan. “What is he talking about?”

With his boot still casually jutting through the door to keep it open, no matter how desperately Mr. Kaplan tried to slam it shut again, Rowan laughed and tossed a hand in the air to dismiss the whole thing. “All water under the bridge now. Nothing to worry about. Isn’t that right, old chap?”

“Chap? Chap ? I’ll show you chap! You’ll hear no more from me about any of it. No, sir. I can guarantee you that. I’ll even stake my life on it. Just…just turn around and leave. This instant!”

“Mr. Kaplan, please,” Rowan continued, his grin unchanged despite the violent thwacking his boot received from the door, jolting him again and again while the elderly elf struggled to close it between them. “All I ask is for a moment of your time.”

“Oh, not this time. Not again. Of course it only starts with a moment of my time, but it always turns into something far bigger, doesn’t it? I will not stand aside and let it unfold like that again. No, sir. I’ve learned my lesson, and you clearly have no respect for—Hold on now. Now…now just a moment! See here!”

This time, Rowan seized the edge of the door in both hands and leaned toward Mr. Kaplan, startling the elf out of his panicked struggle to close the door.

When the elderly man froze in decision, he looked more like a frightened animal caught in the glow of a vehicle’s headlights.

Or a deadly snare.

“Mr. Kaplan, please,” Rowan repeated. “I can assure you I did not come to your Chicago residence for any nefarious purposes. This is something else entirely. You have my word.”

Kaplan scoffed before looking Rowan up and down. “Your word. And what is that to me, hmm? How do I know why you’re really here?”

Rebecca stepped forward to position herself further in the elf’s line of sight, which made for an awkward angle while he bent himself around the door, trying to wrest it free from Rowan’s grip. She cleared her throat. “I was told you could help us with an unidentified key problem.”

Mr. Kaplan’s brown eyes jumped toward her again, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Then he blinked furiously, cocked his head, and seemed to have been drawn back into the present instead of whatever past he was so intent on not repeating.

Whatever it was, if it included Rowan, she didn’t want to know.

“Unidentified key problem, you say?” he asked her, now ignoring Rowan altogether, though he still hadn’t released his desperate grip on the door with both hands. “Now that’s something I would love to help you with, madam. By all means, rest assured, you’ve come to the right place.”

He paused, looked Rowan up and down with flaring nostrils, then adopted a dark scowl as he bent toward the Blackmoon Elf. “Though I must say I want nothing to do with him .”

“Why don’t you just leave him to me, then?” Rebecca summoned her most dazzling smile and hoped it would reassure him. “If this one gets out of hand, I’ll handle him personally.”

The threat in her voice must have been convincing enough. Kaplan gawked at her, then chuckled darkly and loosened his grip on the door. “Well I say… I do like a young woman who knows how to negotiate. But I will hold you to it, my dear. Believe me. I’ll hold you responsible for any damages this ruffian incurs.”

“Completely understood,” she said with a nod. “Now, would you be so kind as to let us in and allow me the benefit of your…unique skill sets?”

She had no idea what she was talking about, but that didn’t seem to be an issue for the old elf. If he appreciated her stepping forward, then she could pretend to know about any number of things until he helped her find out what this key from Aldous’s desk opened. Then she and Rowan would be gone.

Kaplan cleared his throat, looked quickly back and forth between Rebecca and Rowan, then sighed and shuffled aside behind the door, finally opening it again to let them enter. “Oh, very well. Do come in, then, and we can get started.”

Then he released the door entirely, letting it swing open into the thick darkness on the other side, and hobbled off.

Rowan turned around again to grin at Rebecca.

She raised her eyebrows at him and whispered, “I’m watching you.”

“Well of course you are.” With another chuckle he gestured for her to step over the threshold first.

Rebecca took one more glance around the empty alley for good measure, then stepped through the doorway that had opened up in the middle of a brick alley in downtown Chicago.

How had she still not known something like this was here?

As soon as she was safely through, followed by Rowan’s half-shuffling, half-skipping footsteps close behind, the door creaked, swung inward on its own, and latched itself shut, plunging them into near complete darkness.

Mr. Kaplan’s shuffling footsteps up ahead were the only indication of anywhere to go within this magically concealed building constructed without viable physical space for its existence. Somehow, the old elf had managed such a feat anyway.

“Oh, my dear?” Kaplan called over his shoulder. “Do be sure he doesn’t touch anything, won’t you?”

That was absolutely something she could do and a mandate with which she wholeheartedly agreed.

She turned around to make sure Rowan had heard their host’s warning and instead found Rowan reaching toward one of the softly glowing orbs of light embedded in the walls of this strange entryway.

“Rowan,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. “Did you not hear a word he said?”

He paused and shot her a playful smile, though he didn’t yet retract his hand. “I guess you’re gonna have to deal with me personally now, huh?”

“Just leave it alone. You’ve already given him enough reason to think—”

“Oh, he thinks plenty all on his own. And I’m just so curious…”

“Don’t—”

He tapped two fingertips against the orb and grinned.

Beneath his mischievously investigative touch, the light pulsed with a deep orange glow, immediately followed by a screeching, burbling siren blaring through the surrounding space. Through either age or lack of use, the siren sounded more like a sick and dying animal, loud enough to make Rebecca duck and cringe.

Then all the other glowing orbs along the wall in Mr. Kaplan’s inter-alley entryway darkened into the same orange glow and pulsed an increasingly quickening rhythm with the first.

Kaplan spun around toward them, his eyes wide with accusation and terror even as he fought to be heard over the wailing siren and roared, “What part of ‘don’t touch anything’ do you not understand ?”