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EIGHT

Sorsha

Given that we had pretty much no idea who we were dealing with other than that they were formidable as fuck, discretion seemed wise. I held in all other questions until we returned to my apartment with the door shut and locked behind me.

“That symbol you saw on the one man’s weapon,” I said to Thorn. “The star with the sword points. Have you seen that anywhere else before? Any of you?” I cast my gaze to include the other two shadowkind.

Snap shook his head, a slight crease forming on his brow. Of course, from the way he responded to most things in the mortal realm, I didn’t figure he’d seen much of anything on this side of the divide before this recent visit. Ruse contemplated the question for a few seconds longer before indicating no as well.

“I can’t remember a time,” Thorn said. “Why? Do you think it’s especially significant, m’lady? Have you come across it before?” As he studied my expression, his near-black eyes darkened even more.

My chest tightened. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell them about that part of my life. I’d never gone into much detail with Vivi and the rest of the Fund members, even though they were the ones I’d run to—the ones Auntie Luna had told me to run to—after I’d lost her. My shadowkind guardian and I had kept so many secrets for so long, it was hard to break the habit.

But while I could hardly call these three friends, and they were by at least some definitions of the word monsters, they’d shared everything they could about their own catastrophe with me. I’d seen them at their most vulnerable, pinned by spotlights in giant cages. It wasn’t as if sharing the story could hurt me other than the pain that came with remembering those times.

What I did know wasn’t going to help us all that much on its own, though. Before I started making inquiries farther abroad, I should see if I could dredge up anything else from the past that might guide that search.

“I think so,” I said. “Just once, a long time ago. But all I can tell you for sure about the people who had it is that they came after a higher shadowkind just like your bunch did. I don’t know why or even what they meant to do with her. But maybe…”

I glanced at Snap. Ever since I’d seen his talent in action, the thought of other ways he might put it to use had been niggling at me. “Would you be okay with testing a few things I have here with your power and seeing what you can pick up from them?”

He brightened at the suggestion. “Of course,” he said. I could see now how carefully he spoke so that his forked tongue barely showed. One of the first things all higher shadowkind seemed to learn was how to disguise their true nature among mortals. “What would you like me to examine?”

“I’ll get the things. Why don’t you sit down in the living room?” It’d be less cramped than my bedroom, especially since the other two would want to observe.

He tipped his head in agreement, his golden curls jostling against each other, and all but bounded through the doorway. You’d have thought I’d offered him a year’s supply of ripe bananas, not asked to put him to work.

I ducked into my bedroom to dig into the back of my closet shelf. From what the trio had indicated, Snap’s ability mainly picked up the most recent impressions. For there to be any real chance of him gleaning something about Luna’s life, I’d need to give him objects I hadn’t handled much in the past eleven years. I grabbed an Amazon delivery box I hadn’t gotten around to tossing yet and plucked up a pair of sparkly sneakers and a purple scrunchie to set inside so that I didn’t have to touch them too much now as I carried them over.

My attention stalled on a small, pearly box tucked in the corner of the shelf. There wasn’t any practical reason to have Snap test that…

I wavered, a lump rising in my throat. Then, not letting myself second-guess the impulse, I wedged it into one of the hip pockets on my cargo pants. If I changed my mind in the moment, I didn’t have to take it out at all.

In the living room, Snap had sat down on the plaid sofa, giving off definite eager puppy vibes. Ruse dropped into the not-at-all-matching polka-dot armchair that stood kitty-corner to the sofa; Thorn leaned against the wall by the doorway with his arms crossed. I set my box down on the wobbly coffee table in front of Snap and turned to the CD rack next to my little TV. I was pretty sure that at least one of these…

Ah ha, that one would be perfect. I slid the case out, touching as little of its surface as possible, and added it to the box.

“It doesn’t matter what order you go in,” I said. “Just see if you can pick up anything about someone who used them other than me. There might not be anything, but… it seems worth a try.”

Snap set his godly face with such determination that his gorgeousness made my pulse flutter despite my nerves. “I’ll do my best.” He picked up the scrunchie first, giving it a curious look before raising it closer to his mouth.

Luna’s devotion to ‘80s culture had included not just music but all forms of art and fashion. I’d rarely seen her without her light auburn waves pulled high in one of those contraptions. The purple one had been mixed up in my emergency-bag clothes—I’d only found it days after I’d fled. I didn’t know how often she’d worn that one, but I’d never used it.

Snap’s tongue flicked from his lips, and his moss-green eyes hazed. I stood beside the coffee table, trying to keep a relaxed stance, but my shoulders kept stiffening despite my best efforts.

I’d told him to look for impressions that didn’t involve me, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still pick those up. When I’d pulled the thing out of my bag eleven years ago and realized what it was, I’d bawled for a good half hour.

The chance of him seeing that was worth the embarrassment if he also sensed anything that might tell us who’d been after my guardian—and what they’d meant to do to her.

Snap drew in a breath and paused. The corners of his mouth tightened. He shifted the scrunchie in his grasp and tasted its energies again. A restless itch crept under my skin.

Then his eyes widened. His voice came out as dreamy as it had at the bridge. “A shadowkind wore this. Yellowish-orange hair. A light sort of energy—she was fae. She fixed a flower into her hair with this once: an iris. Purple goes with purple—I can coordinate at least that well. ”

His voice wasn’t at all like Luna’s high soprano, but he hit the melodic cadence just right. A shiver ran down my back, equal parts thrilled and pained. I hadn’t expected to be offered an echo of the past quite that potent. What I wouldn’t have given to really hear her voice—to have her still with me. What would she think of the woman I’d finished growing into?

Thorn stirred, his jaw flexing as if he wanted to say something, but he held himself in check while the other shadowkind continued his inspection. Finally, Snap set the scrunchie back down. When he looked at me, I saw more than just an apology in his gaze.

The lump in my throat came back. Everything else he’d gleaned must have had to do with me. Not surprising after all that time.

He might have been clueless about a lot of mortal things, but he was shrewd enough—and kind enough—to keep whatever private moments he’d uncovered to himself, no acknowledgment other than that hint of sympathetic sorrow. “I couldn’t find anything else from her,” he said. “She’s the one you were hoping I’d reach?”

I nodded, not totally trusting my voice to stay steady. Thorn cleared his throat imperiously before Snap could reach for the next item. “Who was this fae? Do you believe she was captured by the same group that took Omen?”

I inhaled slowly, making sure I had a grip on myself, before I met his demanding gaze. Stick to the facts, keep it short, and there was no need to get emotional about it. All of this was more than a decade past anyway.

“My parents died when I was three,” I said. “They were involved in the same kinds of activities the Fund is—helping the shadowkind. One of those was a fae woman named Luna. I don’t remember much from back then, but I know they stayed close friends with her. She came by the house a lot, played with me… She was with me when my parents were attacked, and she got me away from there.”

That day had become reduced to a few fragments in my memories: chasing fireflies in the backyard, their glow and the beat of their wings against my hands, a scream carrying through the back door, my mother’s ragged voice crying, “Luna, go!” Luna’s skinny arms around me as she’d leapt up with supernatural speed to carry me over the fence and away.

“Luna didn’t like to talk about what happened, but from what I gathered, some hunters found out that my parents had interfered with their business and came after them in revenge. After that, she raised me. We moved around a lot because she was always nervous, but no one bothered us for a long time… When I was sixteen, she somehow knew people were coming—we grabbed the things we had packed to run for it—but they’d already reached the house.”

“They captured her as they did Omen,” Thorn filled in.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what they were planning. At the time, I thought they were trying to kill her for being a shadowkind passing as human. They came at her with those whips of light like you said, and one of them had the star symbol on his clothing… They’d almost managed to bind her up when she must have decided she’d rather die on her own terms than theirs—and distract them so I’d have more chance to escape.”

That knowledge came with a pang of guilt. I swallowed hard and managed to go on. “With her magic… She burst apart, like a firework.”

It had been stunningly beautiful and horrifying at the same moment. I’d been so stunned myself that I’d frozen in place. Thankfully Luna’s last act had also literally stunned her attackers, who’d stumbled around dazed for long enough that I’d remembered I needed to get the hell out of there if I’d wanted her sacrifice to mean anything at all.

“Maybe they were only going to capture her, though,” I added. “If they were the same people who ambushed your boss. Hell, if they’ve been up to some kind of larger scale illicit dealings for even longer, it could have been their operations my parents disrupted—they could be the ones who murdered them too.”

“Are you sure your parents are dead?” Ruse asked, his voice carefully gentle.

“Yeah. Luna wouldn’t have kept me away from them. And, my dad at least… They cut off his head.”

I had no visual memory of that moment anymore, only the fact of what I’d seen and the thunk of it hitting the ground after it’d been flung out the window. After I’d woken up nearly every night for weeks sobbing hysterically from nightmares of that moment, Luna had used some of her magic to wipe the image itself from my mind. I don’t want to take all of it , she’d said. You need to remember why it’s important that we stay cautious. But the whole thing is too much.

All three of my guests were silent in the wake of that comment. The weight of their hesitation filled the room. I motioned my hand vaguely as if I could wave their reaction away. “If it’s the same people, then all the more reason I’ll be happy to help you track them down. I just wanted to see if any impressions from Luna’s things might be useful.”

Snap took my cue to move along. “Let me try the others, then.” He picked up the CD case and swiveled it in his hands.

Luna had indoctrinated me with a lot of her tastes, but I’d just never been able to get behind Def Leppard. Whenever she’d put that album on when I was a kid, I’d groan until she gave in and turned it off. I suspected she only liked them because of their name—she’d had a thing for big cats too.

Yet of course she’d kept it in the assortment of “essential music” that stayed in my emergency duffel bag. One of her top twenty, apparently.

Snap gave the case the same thorough examination as he had the scrunchie and frowned. “I hear a little laughter and the sense of her opening it on a couple of spots, but nothing more than that.”

“That’s okay. I knew not to get my hopes up.”

He’d left the sneakers for last. I wasn’t sure whether to have the most or the least hope for those.

Luna had adored them, called them her “fairy dust shoes”… but I’d also worn them for the most traumatic moment of my near-adult life. Sixteen-year-old me, with typical teenage rebelliousness, hadn’t left my shoes where I could easily snatch them up the night we had to flee. It’d started to seem so ridiculous that Luna insisted on so many precautions. Instead of waiting for me to search the piles of clothing around my bedroom, Luna had tossed that pair of hers at me on the way to the door.

They were too small for me by at least one size, maybe two. My recollection of the run away from the house she’d been renting was punctuated by the pinch of my constricted toes, sharper with each step.

No doubt Snap tasted that fraught impression first. He glanced at me again, his divine face haunted by a brief sadness, and then went on with his investigations. I resisted the urge to fidget.

“It’s only fragments,” he said after a while. “I think because it’s been so long—I’m sorry. A lot of happiness when she wore them. And… I get a hint of missing someone they reminded her of, someone who was fae like her maybe? Did she have shadowkind friends? Someone else who might have been taken?”

“I don’t know.” I was a little ashamed that it’d never really occurred to me to wonder about Luna’s social life or lack thereof. “Except when I was at school, she was always with me, and we never visited anyone. We never stayed in any city for more than a couple of years to make close friends.”

But maybe there’d been someone she’d left behind in one of those cities—or way back in the shadow realm—that she’d never mentioned to me. Another sacrifice she’d made, one without my ever knowing.

“This line of investigation does not appear to be very fruitful,” Thorn declared gruffly. He stalked over to the window to survey the street outside as if he felt he’d find more sense of direction there.

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Ruse said more encouragingly. “When we’ve got this little to go on, can’t leave any stone unturned.” He flashed me a smile before getting up.

As the incubus slipped out of the room, Snap put away the shoes. He sighed, all this enthusiasm over contributing having faded away, and stood up. My stomach twisted, but if nothing else, he’d shown he could be respectful of my past traumas. Thorn didn’t appear to be paying attention anyway—and what did I care what he thought, the big grouch?

I touched Snap’s arm. “Wait. There’s something else—not to do with Luna. Just, for me… It’s even more of a longshot, but anything you pick up from it that doesn’t involve me would be more than I’ve got now.”

I pulled out the trinket box with its pearly shell casing. Snap took it from me with tentative fingers. He considered it and then my face.

“This wasn’t the fae’s,” he ventured. “It belonged to your parents?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s—it’s the only thing I have of theirs. They’d given it to Luna to keep for me, just in case.”

There was a letter inside, one I’d pored over so many times I couldn’t imagine it held any impressions that weren’t of me. Telling me that if I was reading it, they were sorry they weren’t there with me, but they hoped I was staying safe with Luna. That what was most important to them was me getting to live my life as fully as I could.

They’d known the hunters might retaliate. They’d been prepared. But I hadn’t been. I remembered my mother’s scream and the sound of my father meeting his death more clearly than anything else about them.

Snap dipped his head so low it was almost a bow. “I appreciate your trusting me with this. I’ll handle it carefully.”

He began his testing even more slowly than before, his tongue flitting here and there, his breath sucked in and expelled. I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I waited. Finally, he lowered the box.

“You’re right,” he said. “There isn’t much. But they had a lot of feeling around this object, so a bit of it clung on even across that many years. They were very sad about the thought that you might need to receive this. Afraid of losing their time with you—but not of the course they’d taken. They were proud of that, of taking risks…” He took another taste as if to clarify that thought. “I get the sense they felt they wouldn’t have had you in their lives at all if they hadn’t taken those risks.”

“Maybe they met through the Fund, through the shadowkind work they were doing,” I said.

“That makes sense.” He offered the box back to me. Our hands brushed as I took it, and he offered me a smile so soft but bright that I lost my breath like I had that first morning when he’d compared my hair to the peach. “The one thing I can tell for sure is they loved you more than anything else in all the realms.”

I choked up abruptly. “Thank you. For all of this. I’ll do whatever I can to find the people who took your boss.”

“I know you will.” He touched my hair again, just for a moment, still smiling. “I thought so when you broke into my cage, but I think it even more now. You’re meant to do good things, Peach.”

Then he ambled away, leaving me wondering why I felt as if I’d needed so very badly to hear someone tell me that.