Page 5 of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1)

Everything Nathan and Jim owned was either on their person or stored in their Veil Slip.

Veil Slips were pockets created in the Veil that only those with the correct magical signature could enter.

Jim was the key to theirs. Nathan couldn't enter without him, and no one could ever break in. They didn’t keep much there, mostly extra clothing, some weapons, and a few things they had been able to salvage from their family home when they had returned there many years after their parents had been killed.

“This is still so lame,” Nathan huffed, pulling his hand out of his brother's grip after they had passed from Wade's doorway into the Veil Slip. Skin contact was the only way Nathan could follow Jim inside.

“How was traveling through the Veil without me again?” Jim teased.

“Shut up.”

Nathan could admit that at least he didn’t feel like he had been hit by a semi-truck like he had when passing from Illinois to Porthclais alone, but entering the Veil Slip was always a little different than simply using doorways.

They were within the Veil. Nathan felt constricted, as if the magic of the place was trying to choke him.

The Veil Slip looked like a simple square room no bigger than a storage locker.

Nathan had heard that they could look however the creator wanted, but Jim hadn't been too inventive when he first made it.

It was just a room filled with boxes. The only unique part was that it didn't require electricity.

The walls glowed with their own natural light.

When they had first stuffed everything they had been able to take from their old house into the tiny room, Nathan had thought the place almost smelled like home. Like their mother maybe. Her lilac soap. Or their father's aftershave. But those scents had long since faded.

“Good thing Wade had those goggles, huh?” Jim said. He moved for one of his boxes on the floor and starting scrounging for extra shirts. "I don't think going to the Veil markets to trade would be a good idea right now."

Nathan peeked in a few of his own boxes, debating trading out any clothing, but didn't feel up to repacking. He was surprised when he looked over and saw Jim loading one of their guns with iron bullets. "You're taking that?" Nathan asked.

"Don't you think we'll need it?" Jim said. "We should bring all of the guns. This isn't life as normal, Nate, when we only have more than one gun on us if something's right on our tail. They'll be hunting us. We need to be ready."

Nathan nodded, but couldn't quite bring himself to move and help Jim gather the other guns.

They had two handguns and two shotguns they had acquired over the years, basic weapons with iron bullets and shells.

They always had at least one gun with them, but Nathan had never cared for the weapons.

His knife he kept close, but guns made it all feel that much more immediate, like they were suddenly at war.

"Come on, Nate," Jim said, handing Nathan the other handgun.

Nathan took it, along with the other shotgun and extra ammo. Jim smiled in encouragement, but Nathan could only grimace in return. "Yippie ki-yay," he said.

Nathan jolted the car to a quick stop behind a typical Soccer Mom minivan that had been consistently staying much more than a car length from the next vehicle ahead. “I hate going urban,” he grumbled.

Nathan and Jim didn’t own a car, but there were very few doorways close to Minneapolis where Wade had said their apparent savior would be today. They had been forced to ‘borrow’ a vehicle from the Sheraden Library parking lot before leaving Pittsburgh.

Normally, Nathan loved No Man’s Land—the nickname people knowledgeable with the Veil had given the Midwest. It was just as supernaturally charged as anywhere else, but the doorways were more spread out, so most fae didn’t venture too deeply into places like Minnesota.

“Look, Nate,” Jim said, “we’re sure about this, right?”

Nathan glanced at his brother. He could admit that it was disconcerting how unchanged Jim seemed after two weeks with the dark fae court.

There were so many possibilities of what might have happened to him while he was gone.

And yet even Jim's voice was the same, always so full of emotion and not quite as deep as Nathan's.

But then that was what Nathan had wanted. For Jim to be the same.

“You’re the one who wanted to go to Wade in the first place,” Nathan said. “I was fine with leaving the whole thing alone.”

“Would you stop acting like this is no big deal?” Jim snapped. “We've had enough trouble with dark fae always coming after me . I’m not letting you end up as a slave, Nathan, or worse and have you die on me.” He turned away, twisting his fingers in the fabric of his khakis.

Nathan gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Jim..."

"What does Walter say about all this?"

Nathan's eyes strayed to the rearview mirror and, as expected, Walter was visible in the backseat, like he was just a normal passenger along for the ride.

Brown eyes met Nathan's in the mirror, but Walter didn't say anything. He had made his opinion clear the night before.

"He's pissed I went behind his back and got myself into this mess, but glad you're okay, and glad we're trying to do something about this.

Good enough?" Nathan turned to look at Jim, who was still turned away from him.

"Hey. Come on. At least my savior is a chick, right? Sasha . I totally call dibs.”

“What?”

“Dibs. If she’s hot,” Nathan amended.

“We’re going to her for help, Nate, not a date.”

“What’s wrong with getting both?”

“Nathan.” Jim shook his head, but the glimmers of a smile were twitching at the corners of his mouth.

“You’re just jealous I called dibs first.”

“ Nathan .”

“Ah, come on, Jim, I’m just trying to have a little fun.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “That was our exit,” he said, pointing at the passing onramp that would have merged them onto their next Interstate.

“Oh. Shit.”

Beige carpeting and freshly painted white walls surrounded them inside Park Glen Apartments, making the whole place seem unnaturally sterile.

“What number again?” Nathan asked after they had climbed to the third floor. They were in St. Louis Park, a suburb only a few short miles from downtown Minneapolis. It was Friday night, still early, but with so few people around it had been easy to sneak into the building.

“It’s apartment 312. But hang on,” Jim said, grabbing Nathan's arm. “What are we going to say? Excuse us, Miss, but our psychic friend said you’re going to save us from the evil faeries? She’ll think we’re nuts.”

“If this Sasha chick is really supposed to help us then she has to know something about the Veil,” Nathan countered.

“We can just…I don’t know, make up some story until we feel her out enough to know if we can bring up the truth without her freaking.

Hell, maybe she’s another psychic and already knows we’re coming.

Wade didn’t have much for specifics. Just a name and number. ”

“I guess,” Jim said, reluctantly releasing Nathan’s arm, “but then what’s the story? Old friends she for some reason has no memory of?”

“I’ll think of something.” Nathan knocked twice on the door to apartment 312, confident he could at least sweet talk his way through an initial meeting until they could figure out how much of the real world Sasha knew.

Nathan knocked again. She was supposed to be here. It was the right apartment, the right day. But after a couple knocks more, there was still no answer.

"Maybe we're early. Wade wasn’t exactly sure, remember?” Jim spoke in hushed tones, like he was afraid the girl who obviously wasn't home would hear him. “Did we change time zones?”

Nathan snorted. “Not since Wisconsin,” he said. He decided to try a different tactic. He reached for the doorknob.

“Nate!” Jim hissed at him.

“Quiet,” Nathan hissed right back. Something was definitely wrong.

The door was unlocked.

Nathan shot Jim a knowing look. With a quick survey of the hallway to be sure no one else was around, he pulled out the handgun he had tucked into his jeans. Jim gaped at him.

"You're the one who wanted to bring them, remember? Hey, Walter,” Nathan called out as he turned away from his brother, darting his eyes around the hallway until his personal ghost materialized to the right of Jim. “Scout ahead, will ya? I got a bad feeling about this.”

Walter was scowling as if to say that he had had a bad feeling about this from the beginning, but he nodded. Stepping around Jim, Walter passed Nathan to walk through the closed apartment door.

“Did he go?” Jim asked.

“We’re good. Get ready.”

Nathan gave the door a gentle push and let it swing slowly open.

There were no signs of anything in their immediate line of sight other than a closet door.

The lights were off, but the curtains had to be open somewhere because it was more than bright enough to see.

Sasha could have run out for a moment; maybe she was doing laundry and had forgotten to lock the door behind her.

It was possible , but Nathan doubted they were that lucky.

They entered the apartment cautiously, clicking the door closed behind them.

Passing the empty galley kitchen that smelled faintly of stale bread, they eventually reached the dining and living room to the right.

The yellow tape blocking the living room entrance and leading further down the hallway toward the bedroom made both of them falter.

"This is a crime scene," Jim said, stumbling back the way they had come. "We're too late. She has to be dead."

"Hey. Don't jump ahead on this," Nathan said. "Do you see any blood? Any marked evidence lying around? Any cops ? That tape's old, been here for a week or more and no one's come back to clean up the last of the mess. Wade wouldn't have sent us here if this Sasha chick got killed days ago."

Jim's brow remained tightly knit. “Where’s Walter?” he asked.

"I don’t see him,” Nathan admitted, “but he has to be around here somewhere. Look, we'll get a good look around, make sure there's nothing funny going on, and if we still don't find any sign of this Sasha, we'll bail. Okay?"

Jim’s frown deepened, but instead of moving to leave, he stepped forward to bypass Nathan completely, taking point en route to the bedroom.

“Hey, stay behind me,” Nathan hissed, wedging himself in front of Jim.

He heard the huff Jim released at that, but ignored it.

He was the one with the gun, after all.The hallway was narrow, the bathroom coming up first on their left—empty—leaving the bedroom as the last unchecked area of the apartment.

It was obvious as they approached the end of the hallway that whatever crime occurred here, the worst of it had happened in the bedroom.

That was where the most residual yellow tape was shimmering at them like giant strips of highlighter markings.

Before they could reach the mouth of the bedroom door, there was a telling creak of movement. Nathan leveled his gun. He was already under the yellow tape, aiming at the empty corners of the bedroom when he heard Jim call, “Nathan!”

Nathan whipped around, gun still at the ready. Jim should have been right on his heels, but he must have headed back down the hallway. Racing to the mouth of the living room again, the last thing Nathan expected to find was another gun pointed at him . Or, rather, pointed at Jim .

The stranger repositioned his aim onto Nathan immediately.

He appeared to be human, not the dark fae Nathan had been expecting, and was casually dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a short leather jacket.

The weird thing, other than that he was pointing a gun at them, was his bright Crayola red hair.

He had even gone to the trouble of dying his eyebrows.

He looked no older than them, but his eyes blazed blue, and despite the punk dye-job, Nathan recognized the look of an experienced fighter.

“Who are you?” the stranger demanded, his attention darting between the brothers warningly. “This apartment is under police investigation.”

“Yeah,” Nathan said. “Well, you don’t look like police to me, pal.”

“I could say the same."

The stranger knew to keep his eyes just as steadily on Jim. Jim didn’t need a gun to be a threat any more than Nathan did. Brawling had been just as an essential skill to hone over the years as hot-wiring cars and bartering with fae.

As Nathan moved to be parallel with his brother, Jim started inching closer to him.

The movement caught the stranger’s attention and he pointed his gun back on Jim. “Stay still! Hands where I can see them! Now who are you?” he demanded again. “What are you doing here?”

Nathan didn't like the look of this guy—fierce, steady, calculating. “Listen, pal—” he said, but Jim cut him off.

“Wait! We don’t mean any harm. We’ll tell you.”

Great , Nathan thought, make nice with the guy with the gun .

“We were just looking for the woman who lives here. Sasha Kelly,” Jim said, holding his hands up higher as an apparent show of good faith. “We didn’t know this was a crime scene until we got here. Do you know what happened? Is Sasha still alive?”

Nathan was convinced that Jim was an absolute idiot when instead of asking more questions or shooting Jim in the head, the stranger actually lowered his weapon.

“You’re looking for Sasha Kelly ?” he asked, losing all of his animosity in a single rush like deflating air.

Jim dropped his arms back to his sides.

Nathan stared over the top of his weapon.

“It’s, uhh...sort of a long story," Jim said. "Is she okay?”

The stranger slipped his gun back into his jacket. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Itchy trigger finger. As for your questions, well, I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is the girl who lived in this apartment was killed days ago.”

Nathan had been afraid of that, rare as it was for Wade to be wrong.

“But the good news is,” he added with a playful smirk, “ I’m Sasha Kelly.”