Page 11

Jack

I turned over in my bed, punched the pillow, and closed my eyes. The woman’s wild eyes haunted me—the way her foot trembled on Dane’s thigh, how she bit back the embarrassment and pain. I’d never forget the iron clamped around her ankle… or the fury that lit her face.

Though my temper had gotten the better of me, I couldn’t help the urge to turn back. I’d stopped at the end of the hall, watching as Dane ordered her to place her foot on his thigh and heat sizzled in my veins when he clamped the chain around her leg once more.

She had been helping the fairies. Of course she wouldn’t admit it to me. She was in chains for it, and I was just another AFF member to her.

I jabbed the heel of my palm into my pillow again, resisting the urge to march back to her room and release her right now.

When she’d asked for my help, I’d been gutted.

It wasn’t in my nature to sit by while anyone suffered, but such an overt act of defiance would undo all my work.

Dane was intent on making a lesson out of her and if I freed her now, my cover would be blown.

With Alice as her jailer, I couldn’t do anything at present, but I wouldn’t leave her behind when I freed the fairies beneath Dane’s compound.

Eyes sliding open, I blinked a few times, waiting for the room to solidify into recognizable shapes. My first thought was of the woman trapped here. How had she slept? On a dirty mattress on the floor with chains around her ankles, it wasn’t hard to guess.

Sitting up, I rubbed my neck. I never slept well after my mom passed, but ever since I’d left college and moved into the now AFF headquarters three years ago, I was lucky if I got four hours a night.

When I moved in, it was meant to be temporary.

I hadn’t known what Dane was up to. When I arrived and learned he wasn’t just squatting in a building near the pocket entrances to Faerie—he was organizing a revolution against the creatures—I knew I had to stop him.

When I learned he had taken prisoners, it became clear he must be shut down for good.

The linchpin to my plan was my anonymity.

No one would suspect the son of the AFF leader of duplicity.

At least not as long as I wasn’t caught.

That meant I couldn’t risk helping the fairies escape until the rest of my plan had been set in motion.

The day I freed them, I would need to leave this place behind, knowing it would all fall.

I dressed quickly, sliding on a pair of jeans and a black tee. I wanted to be out of the compound before anyone was truly awake.

Slipping out the side exit reserved for high command and…me, I crossed the street and stepped into my favorite morning coffee shop.

“Jack!” Leo called.

I frowned as I stepped up to the counter.

“What’s a matter?” Leo leaned his elbows onto the glass counter and although there was a line of customers, gave me all his attention.

Leo was my first real friend in the city, and when I’d told him of my mad plan, he hadn’t blinked.

A former naval intelligence officer, he’d been eager to put his hacking skills to use, doing something good.

It didn’t hurt that he owned the coffee shop across the street from AFF headquarters, which made it the best place to meet.

We never communicated via text or emails, knowing all too well how easy it was to hack devices.

We discussed everything in person after the room was swept for bugs.

We’d learned a lot about Dane’s operation since Leo joined my cause over a year ago, and most recently, Leo was tracking the source of large payments Dane had begun receiving over the past several months.

Before, Dane relied on the money donated by AFF initiates to fund his mission.

That he now had a new source of funds from an anonymous donor worried us all.

“Coffee. three sugars.” It was code for ‘we need to talk.’

Leo jerked his head to the side, letting me know some of my father’s devotees were already here.

I glanced left and grimaced when I spied his three armed guards perched around a high top, sipping coffee.

Oliver, Jim, and Brian always traveled in a pack.

Of course they were here. They were likely celebrating their night’s success. Disgust simmered in my gut.

“I just got a shipment this morning. I’ll be right back.”

I dipped my chin. “Take your time. I need to use the restroom.”

Leo went first, and I followed, moving past the restroom to his office.

I closed the door behind me and waited in silence as Leo swept the room. He nodded, giving the all-clear, and I moved to a chair in the corner. “Dane has a woman chained inside the compound for attempting to help the fairies last night. I have to get her out when we free the others.”

Leo’s thick brows bunched over his nose. “I have something more important.”

I straightened. “Did you find the source?”

He nodded. “It’s much worse than we thought.”

My stomach dropped. I’d speculated over who the new donor could be for weeks, naming several outspoken celebrities and political figures who might be eager to see Dane carry out his campaign.

“The money is coming from Janet Glassdon.”

My throat went dry. Worse was an understatement. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the chair arm. “Janet Glassdon. Co-council leader of the Inter Species Human Fae Alliance? Why? Why would she want Dane to succeed? She helped create that council to ensure peace between our kinds.”

Leo shrugged. “Took me a long time to trace. It was buried under so many dummy corporations I almost didn’t find it. But she slipped.” He shook his head. “They always do.”

Prying my fingers off the chair arm, I stood, stuffing my hands in my pockets and paced the room.

Janet Glassdon was the last person I’d ever expect to support my father.

She was extremely vocal about her views on the alliance and instrumental in pushing forward cohabitation laws.

She’d also been the first to initiate the no interspecies relationships laws, but she’d claimed that was a law fairy kind had instituted. One necessary to ensure peace.

This blew all my plans to shit. Stopping Dane was one thing.

Taking down ISHFA. Impossible. I ran a hand through my hair, continuing to pace.

“She must be working against the council.” I looked up.

“Start digging up anything you can on Janet. We need to find out how deep this goes.” If Janet was working against them, we’d add her to the list of people to take down.

If she wasn’t…Taking down the entire council would be insurmountable with our limited resources.

Leo nodded, tapping a finger against the counter. His nervous tick. “I’ll tell Grace. She’ll want to know.”

I tugged my phone out of my pocket, checking the time. “It’s early. She won’t be up yet. I have a few things to do this morning. Let’s meet again tonight?”

Leo frowned, a scar bisecting his right eyebrow, showing starkly with the movement. “Phones, Jack?”

I shoved it in my pocket. “Habit. Won’t happen again.”

I waited, counting to ten before leaving the room after Leo slipped out and grabbed my coffee from the counter, not meeting Leo’s eye as he rang another customer up.

I stepped out onto the street and stuffed a hand in my pocket, fishing out my phone.

It was three hours until the pharmacy where Grace, my only friend from undergrad, worked and I relied heavily on her to provide meds to treat the injured fairies.

Grace was the first to join the cause, following me home one morning after I’d made yet another run for supplies.

She’d thought she would bust an Xcess distributor, but had even more to say when she learned where I lived.

I’d had no choice but to tell her the true reason I lived at the compound.

She had demanded to help and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She made deliveries to Dane’s other prisons around the city when she could, but those were heavily guarded and a lot harder to get into.

We planned to free those creatures after we took Dane down.

Now, knowing there may be others involved in his scheme, I wasn’t sure how much longer they would have to wait to be freed.

Crossing into Central Park, I did something I hadn’t done in three years; I left the main road and stepped onto the running path.

People weren’t expressly forbidden from leaving the main roads in Central Park, but it was risky.

There were four fairies living in the park who weren’t bound by the rules ISHFA had put in place that protected people from fairy magic.

They were guardians who lived just outside the pocket entrances to Faerie, inside a protective shield meant to keep the magic of Faerie from spilling into our world.

I’d never seen them before, but we learned all about them in Dane’s re-education class.

I broke into a light jog as my arms prickled with goosebumps. When we moved to New York, Central Park was always crowded. Now, people rarely entered the park, especially near the water. This close to the JQO Reservoir, I felt the otherness of this place.

Something not of Earth startled from the trees, flapping overhead and I ducked on instinct. It flapped great leather wings as it moved, carving a path over the reservoir and away from me.

I picked up my pace, cutting through the grass onto East Drive.

The North Woods should be safer than the lake, considering they were under the Seelie Court’s jurisdiction, but something about this part of Central Park unsettled me.

It was one of the many reasons I usually avoided it.

Today, though, I needed to see just how far my father had gone.

Leaving the road, I followed the path to the cohabitation housing built for fairies living on Earth. Black clouds puffed into the sky long before I reached the place where the several-story building sat only yesterday. The air was heavy with ash and the smell of charred wood.

The building was gone. Nothing remained but blackened wood and smoke.

The home of hundreds, erased like it was never there.

My knees hit dirt before I knew I’d dropped.

Charred bodies lay scattered. I pressed my fingers against the cool, burned skin beside me.

I couldn’t tell what type of creature he’d been.

Even the name tag affixed to his blue button-down was too melted to read.

Vision blurring, I looked up, scanning the scalded earth for any signs of life. No one moved. All was still and silent. For these creatures, I had come too late.

Scrubbing ash from my lashes, I stood, taking in my surroundings.

The largest of the fairy buildings had sat at the edge of the woods, backing up to the main road, close enough that any of the condos across the street could have caught fire in the blaze. Miraculously, they hadn’t.

A line of scorched earth cut too cleanly across the grass.

Someone had made sure only the fairies burned.