Page 29

Maurice

I t takes everything in me to leave the clan house and head to the Wild Hunt’s base the next night, and at the time, I write it off as a fluke.

It has been a long time since I have slept with someone I have a more emotional connection with, and I do like Njáll, despite my initial reluctance to be assigned to him.

But a week later, I still do not feel fully settled.

It makes little sense! I work alone. I always have, except for some outlying cases that have required two or three hunters to subdue. So being alone now should be no trouble.

Only it is. I wake a few times per day, thinking that I should be somewhere else, should be ensuring someone else’s safety. The hunt I am on is—not fruitless, not exactly, but it is tiring having to chase down all these fae the Huntsman has me after, to toss them back through the veil one by one.

I do not know how the others are faring.

Vlad is the only one of us who remains in London, with Grant, of course, by his side.

Asher is somewhere in Wales, though it is beyond me what he is investigating.

Jeremiah and Paxton were in the east of England last I checked, but Jeremiah has always been efficient with his jobs, and I do not for a second think Paxton slows him down.

I frown as I realise. Only Asher and I still work alone. Rook and Saide came into the Huntsman’s clutches as a pair, I am certain, but after that, he picked us off solo. Jeremiah, me, Moreau, Vlad, Asher… There are likely others, too, hunters I have never met.

Jeremiah has Paxton now, as though the Huntsman chose a hunter for him to keep. And the Huntsman himself has always remained close by Moreau’s side, though I am not certain if Moreau knows just how close. Vlad found himself a turn, one the Huntsman has allowed to survive, and I…

It would not work with Njáll. He is, first and foremost, the clan’s crai. He might talk about his unsuitability for that role, but he is wrong—he will grow into it with time, and truthfully, I agree with Vasile. Njáll will be a better leader than he could have ever hoped for.

He would not want to hunt fae, I don’t think, as I wander through the ruins of a castle long since abandoned. I am no necromancer, but I fancy I hear the spirits calling to me, ghosts of bloody battles fought centuries before even I was born.

No. It is for the best that Njáll and I parted ways when we did, and I need to maintain that distance.

So lost in my musings, I almost miss the sight of the first redcap as it darts through the shadows. My magic feels it, dragging me back to the present, to my job, and I switch direction, slipping inside a tower and taking the narrow, perilous stairs.

Of course they are not waiting at the top, but here gives me a good view of the castle and the moat that surrounds it, so I settle in to watch.

Redcaps are usually left alone, being as they are both weak and usually disinterested in sites that aren’t battlefields, but these are mischievous and have been leaving the ruins and terrorising the town nearby.

Not that anyone there knows what is truly going on, of course. By the end of tonight, it won’t matter.

The Huntsman has taken a hard line, in the wake of his news about the fae queen.

No interference with humans can be tolerated.

It only takes one fae pushing things too far for a war to start here , and though humans are, in terms of power, at a disadvantage, none of us truly believe they would lose should push come to shove.

The redcaps scurry about now that they’re not certain where I am, and it takes no time at all for me to locate their nest. They always return well before the sun comes up, so I still have a few hours of darkness when I descend from the tower again and hunt them down.

Hunting involves little violence when I am dealing with opponents like this. Redcaps are generally small and angry but easily handled with the right spells. They have no leader, so I make sure to stun them all at the same time and gather them together as I tell them where they’re to go.

“They’ll kill us if we go back,” one spits when I say I’m sending them through the veil. “The Unseelie are losing it.”

“You’ve been here for nigh on a century. How would you even know?”

She shifts guiltily from foot to foot. Her clothes are covered in what looks like cat fur. Oh, I don’t think she killed the creature. Probably irritated it into running around a house all night; that, or a particularly vicious house cat might have chased her off.

“The Seelie come,” another says. “Tell us things.”

“Like what?”

He presses his lips tightly together and I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. I am not supposed to be investigating. I am doing my duty. I am keeping humans safe from the fae.

The fae blessing the Huntsman gave us has one stream of magic we can all access, at all times, though we know how careful we are to be with it. We can open the veil, the magic that separates our world from the fae’s, just long enough to send our prey through.

The Huntsman told me, too, that it only goes one way, and I never need to worry about a high fae pushing through from the other side. I know he is fae, too. I know he cannot lie.

Still, part of me does not believe him.

I open the veil with a flick of my hand and a wordless twist of my lips, and the redcaps all startle as one. They babble at me, frantic to stay in a world where they can get by a little easier, and guilt twists in my stomach, but what else am I to do? Their reckless behaviour risks us all.

Once it is done, once all the redcaps are returned to the Otherworld, I close the veil again and lean back against the wall. No one will find the nest unless they go looking for it, so I leave it behind, climbing into the hire car I left parked nearby earlier.

I am not so far from London. My hands tighten on the steering wheel, and it takes me a moment to let go and start the engine.

I should not go.

I should head somewhere I can rest because I will have another hunt tomorrow night.

But then…

The base is in London, and I can rest there. Vlad is coordinating our hunts anyway, so that way, I can speak to him directly, and perhaps even get a list of the next three or four places I should go.

And if I happen to drive past the clan house and see Njáll? Well, that is no one’s business but my own.

I think I have officially lost it.

Not only have I driven to the clan house—out of the question, really, as the Huntsman made it clear I was not to return—I have parked the car three streets away and now I am circling the building, hidden from the guards, trying to find the window that looks into Njáll’s office.

When I do locate it, the lights are off, the room empty. I frown. Where else could he be? The entire time I was by his side, he was either there, or out investigating with me, or in his rooms…

I frown, taking a few steps back to look the entire building over. It was a hotel once, sometime in the 1800s, and there is a rickety fire escape up one side, which I take as slowly as I am able. I know where the room I was staying in is, and Njáll’s is just a few windows over…

I must be out of my mind, but still, I find myself shuffling along a narrow ledge until I can see into what I hope are Njáll’s rooms. The bedroom first; the curtains are open, and light spills in from the living area, but there is no one inside.

I cling to the brick as I move further along.

There! Njáll stalks across the living room, and my heart stops for a moment.

His hair is a mess, as though he has been running his fingers through it, shirt unbuttoned to his chest. I fight the wild urge to knock on the window and ask him to let me in—no good can come of him knowing I am here.

No good can come of me being here.

And it doesn’t, either, when I see Bel sitting on the sofa, one arm casually thrown over the back of it. He says something that makes Njáll pause and shake his head before he takes a glass from the side and hands it over.

Bel accepts the drink, sipping it slowly as Njáll rounds the sofa and sits next to him. They lean close together and, oh, I’m not a fool. From the way Njáll reacted when I touched him, I don’t think he’d so easily move on to another, and I know that Bel is far more observant than he lets on.

No, no. They’re not lovers. But I still feel that envy. That longing , that they have each other, in whatever capacity that might be, and I am… here. Outside, looking in.

Maybe that is why the others have partnered up, partnered off. Why Vlad turned Grant, even knowing that the Huntsman might take him away immediately. It was easier to ignore this feeling when I was alone in Scotland because seeing humans living their fleeting lives is hardly comparable.

I climb down even slower and drive my little car over to the Wild Hunt’s base. The scene plays over and over in my mind. I cannot leave the Hunt. To leave the Hunt would be to abandon my magic, and I cannot do that.

I will get over Njáll. I will.

Grant is thankfully not present when I arrive at the house—I do not want to answer what I am certain would be a barrage of questions—and Vlad takes one look at me and gestures at the stairs. “I will have more jobs for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

I start to make my way up the stairs, but Vlad’s hand on the banister stops me. “The Huntsman is coming, too,” he says quietly, and dread pools in the bottom of my stomach. “He called half an hour ago. He wants to talk to you.”

“He—He didn’t…” I fumble my phone out of my pocket, still unused to it. No missed calls. He hasn’t tried to call me.

Vlad only nods in answer, both eyebrows raised as though he somehow knows what I was doing earlier tonight.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll be here.”