Hidden Dragons (32 page)

That certainly would insure the queen heard about their presence, though not sharing his misgivings with his pack meant Adam was playing a deeper game than usual. As a rule, he kept his team informed.

Rick shut the ElfBook and rubbed his jaw. To hell with it. He was Adam’s second. Adam ought to trust him with whatever was in the works.

“Hey,” he said, shaking the pack leader’s shoulder. “Adam, wake up.”

Adam grunted and turned his head the other way.

“Adam.”

Still the wolf didn’t wake. Concerned, Rick pushed him bodily upward in the chair. When that failed to rouse him, Rick took a steadying breath and slapped him across the face. He’d hit him hard enough for his palm to sting . . . and earned no response at all.

Fuck
, he thought. He sniffed the coffee Adam had been drinking but scented no drugs in it. Was the pack leader spelled? Or maybe the whole house was. He remembered how Ceallach had sent a block’s worth of apartment residents to sleep in order to attack Cass’s father without raising an alarm. Could the faerie queen do the same? Was she at the house already? Was she even then kidnapping the dragons?

He ran for the door, grateful he’d remembered to strap the protector sword to his back. He touched the knob, so eager to reach the brood he noticed too late that it was icy. As he flung it open, a damp chill enveloped him. His instincts kicked in then. He retreated, trying to get away from the invisible wintry patch, but the chill came with him. His breath puffed white and his knees buckled. Sleep sucked him down in an irresistible undertow. His eyelids were leaden, his thoughts as sluggish as cold honey. He reached for his Saint Michael medal, but the charm on it had been overwhelmed. His cheek thunked onto the carpet. He couldn’t move . . . couldn’t remember why he should.

Cass
, he thought worriedly.

Sleep tight
, said a whispery male voice.

~

Cass felt herself bobbing, up and down, up and down, like a cork on rough ocean. That anti-hangover blessing must not be working. Or maybe it was no good for seasickness. Either way, Jin ought to return the bottle for a refund.

You weren’t drinking
, she reminded.
Not even a single sip
.

She opened her eyes and looked down at herself in bed . . . five feet below where she was floating.

Holy smokes
, she thought.
I hope I’m not dead
.

She wasn’t; she could see herself breathing. She was having an out of body experience, something she couldn’t recall happening in her sleep before. Not that she’d necessarily remember. People often forgot dreams. Cass especially was good at forgetting.

This seemed so funny she snickered.

Daughter
, said her father’s voice.
You need to concentrate and come to me
.

Visiting her father was not on her to-do list. She should wish herself to Morocco. Or spy on hot naked men.

Cassia
, her father insisted.

Oh fine
, she snapped mentally. In the time it took to blink, she reached the palm-filled conservatory outside his room. Seen with her astral vision, the indoor garden wasn’t at all pretty. The vines had grown as big as serpents, their thick black stems a sinister tangle that barred his door. Sleeping Beauty wouldn’t be able to win free of that prison.

Whether her father could seemed iffy.

If he couldn’t come out, she’d have to go in. He was her father, and she loved him—even if he’d done infuriating things she couldn’t quite remember. Because it seemed to make sense, she held her breath and pushed through the barrier.
Whoa
, she thought, looking around inside. More tendrils from the vines had infiltrated here. They’d wrapped her father from neck to ankle, binding him and his spirit to the bed.

He was awake at least—and highly irritated, to go by the blaze in his soft blue eyes.

“That doesn’t look comfortable,” she observed.

“It doesn’t matter. You need to stop Joscela. You’re the only one who can.”

“Joscela?”

“The queen,” he said. “The one who wants to steal your dragons.”

“Oh. The evil queen.” Cass fought a shiver. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? She’s a queen. I’m only half faerie.”

“Come here,” her father ordered, and of course she had to. He was impossible to disobey when he used that voice. “Listen to me, daughter. There’s no
only
to what you are. You have power. Not just faerie power either. Remember how strong your grandmother was.”

Cass did. She remembered something else as well. “You compelled me to live Outside. You spelled me away from her.”

“Only to keep you safe. Parents do that for their children. Keepers do that for their broods.”

Cass’s astral shoulders straightened. “Those dragons don’t belong to her.”

“No they don’t. They belong to themselves and you.”

Cass considered that. “I have my mother’s blood in me too. She isn’t very strong.”

“Isn’t she?” asked her father. “Irene convinced herself the Pocket isn’t real. She lived here for forty years. Don’t you think that takes mental power? You have what it takes to defeat Joscela.”

“You’re trying to glamour me to believe in myself.”

Her father smiled at the accusation. “Because you should, sweetheart. Trust me, no truer spell was ever spun.”

She looked down at him. She knew he meant well, but he was wrong.

“I have to trust
me
,” she corrected. “Without being tricked into it. That’s the only way I’ll be strong enough.”

To her surprise, he didn’t argue. “As you prefer,” he said. “The queen is in the garden behind the house. You need to hurry. The sun is rising. Royals draw strength from that.”

Awesome
, Cass thought sourly. Like a plain old pureblood wasn’t strong enough.

She kept her doubts to herself and nodded.

“Go now,” her father urged, like she could just
do
these things.

But she needed to prove she could. Forcing herself to calm, she imagined the reflecting pool: the scarlet leaves floating on its surface, the glimmer of the new day. A breeze would ripple the lush green grass . . .

I’m just a breeze
, she thought, wanting to arrive unnoticed.

Air rushed through her, and she was there. Joscela wasn’t. Jin stood barefoot on the lawn in a long sundress, facing away from her. She looked beautiful and romantic, though maybe not warm enough for the time of year. Cass felt a rush of fondness. She was lucky to have friends—even if they couldn’t always cheer her up. She opened her mouth, forgetting she didn’t have vocal chords and couldn’t greet her friend normally.

Jin turned. “There you are.”

She wasn’t speaking to Cass. Her gaze was directed to a faint cloud of mist hovering in the air a few feet from her. Jin’s face suddenly seemed odd. Her nose wasn’t the right shape, and her cheekbones seemed to have been dusted with glitter. Her irises were lavender, when they should have been gold. Cass jerked, her brows shooting up in shock. Jin’s hair was growing longer, and longer, until it reached her waist. The strands had changed color too. No longer twenty-four carat streaked with pink, they bore the silvery sheen of electrum.

Oh
, she thought, finally getting what her father must have realized. This wasn’t Jin. Joscela had used glamour to impersonate her. More than glamour, actually. She’d known exactly how to act like her friend—recreating her memories, her personality, right down to keeping Rhona and Pip away. Jin was smart and considerate like that. Apart from a fraction less warmth than the original, the copy was perfect.

Cass didn’t see how this was possible. Joscela had fooled Bridie, who’d known her cousin from infancy. Almost everything the queen had uttered had been a lie. She should have been in terrible pain, but she’d never betrayed it. Could a pureblood hide that much discomfort?

More importantly, what had she done with the real Jin?

Dismay clutched the stomach Cass didn’t have, but she had to push the concern aside. She needed to know who Joscela was talking to.

“Come out of there,” the queen demanded, beckoning with a hand that was whiter and more elegant than Jin’s. “I need to talk to you.”

The misty spot in front of her unzipped.

If Cass had been in possession of her lungs, her gasp surely would have audible. Ceallach stepped out of the opening in the air, the same Ceallach Rick had supposedly killed. An electrum collar braced his neck between his collarbones and jaw, similar to what EMTs used to immobilize accident victims.

Having your head half cut off probably qualified as a risk to your spinal cord.

Ceallach must have reached Joscela in time for her to apply the fix magically. Cass didn’t think he’d done it himself. He looked considerably de-juiced from when she’d seen him blazing bright as the sun in the Maycee barn. Joscela seemed to notice this as well.

She frowned as she regarded him. “Is the household asleep?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice also wan-sounding.

“And T’Fain’s old keeper?”

“Trapped by the vines, as you instructed.”

“Good.” Despite her positive response, Joscela’s exquisite mouth thinned with displeasure. “You don’t look well. Do you need me to charge you again?”

The formerly vital Ceallach shook his head. “I have the power I need to carry out your wishes.”

Since his answer was nearly lifeless, Cass understood why the queen scowled harder. “Did you bring the girl?”

Ceallach turned to lean into the unzipped mist. His body disappeared to the waist. Suddenly, Cass realized how he’d escaped after Rick wounded him. He’d used an interdimensional carrying pocket, the one accessory no pureblood would be caught dead without. The spelled spaces were meant to transport inanimate objects. Ceallach had upped the capacity of his by sending himself to the queen instead.

Cass was spared admiring his cleverness by what he pulled from the pocket next. It was her: her unconscious body hanging limp in his arms, thankfully modest in Bridie’s borrowed sweats. The pureblood set her none too carefully on the grass, her arms and legs flopping down after.

That was disturbing, to say the least.

“Are you certain we need her?” Ceallach asked.

Okay, that was more disturbing.

“Yes,” Joscela confirmed. “The dragons have bonded with her. They’ll be impossible to handle without her to control them.”

“But can you control her?”

“Of course I can. I’ve already made a start on breaking her spirit. It won’t be long before I’ve convinced her I’m her only friend in the universe.”

Her cohort looked down at Cass’s awkwardly sprawled body. “She was strong enough to imprint them.”

“That only delays our plan. Once a new brood is born, I’ll take control of them. We’ll finally put an end to this . . . repulsive experiment.” She waved her hands to indicate the world around them. Cass didn’t know what Joscela saw. To her, their surroundings were beautiful—the grass, the sky, the scents of autumn and horse, even the lovely faeries lit by the morning sun. The scene reflected the essence of the blended realities: grounded, homely, yet magical.

Ceallach appeared neither disgusted nor enthralled. “What if the halfling discovers how to speak to the dragons mind-to-mind? What if she becomes a true keeper?”

“She won’t. She can’t.” Joscela reached to squeeze Ceallach’s shoulder. “Don’t you see? That was her father’s plan. He whelped a child who could imprint the hatchlings, but who’d lack the mental power to fully exploit their potential. I felt her and the brood communicate. It was all primitive emotion, barely any words at all. There’s simply no way she could convey the detail needed to create or destroy worlds. It’s a shame no one else can claim the creatures, but whatever jumped-up human her sire found to breed her on, she’ll never be more than a mongrel.”

Ceallach nodded, the collar that held his neck gleaming. He hesitated. “When you have what you want,” he asked carefully, “then will you let me go?”

“Darling!” Joscela cried. “How can you ask me that?”

He gazed pleadingly at her. “I don’t feel . . . right. Ever since you put this collar on me, it’s like black ice is eating the edges of my spirit. I’m cold, Joscela, and I feel myself slipping. It won’t be long before there’s no
me
in here.”

“We’ll fix that,” Joscela promised, the set of her features fierce. “As soon as we’ve wrapped up this inconvenience, I’ll feed you all the power you need to recover. We’ll make this rabble pay for what they’ve done to you.”

“Joscela.” Ceallach covered the hand she’d rested on his shoulder. “If you didn’t know in your heart they’d killed me, you wouldn’t care about punishing them.”

For just a second, tears glimmered in her lavender eyes. “Don’t talk like that,” she said, blinking them away. “You’re not yourself right now. You’ll be grateful I saved you later.”

The pleading drained from Ceallach’s expression—and much of the life as well. “As you wish, my queen. Shall I collect the dragons or will you?”

Cass snapped alert. She wasn’t just here to watch. She needed to do something. She could attempt to get back into her body, but what if that sent her astral to sleep as well? Her heart wanted to go to Rick. He had the sword, for one thing, but he wasn’t the closest to the most imminent danger.

Nate
, she decided, picturing him knocked out on that bale of hay with his arm crooked around the big gun. Rick had mentioned an automatic weapon with electrum ammo might kill faeries.

She was beside the snazzy wolf almost before she realized she’d chosen him as her goal. The dragons woke when she knelt. Evidently, they could see her energy body.

She shushed their chitters and thought quickly.

Because Verdi was the leader, she took his head between her ethereal hands.

“I want you to hide,” she said, showing him pictures of what she meant. “You and your brother and sister need to stay out of reach of the bad faeries. I’m going to wake this nice wolf and Rick, and we’re going to finish them.”