To Catch a Queen

TO CATCH A QUEEN

Shanna Swendson

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

William Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part II

One
,
Central Park—New York City, Wednesday, 1:00 p.m.

Two
,
Maybelle, Louisiana, 12:20 p.m. (Central Time)

Three
,
New York City, the Upper West Side, 4:00 p.m.

Four
,
The Theater District, 4:45 p.m.

Five
,
The Theater District, 6:15 p.m.

Six
,
Central Park, 9:00 p.m.

Seven
,
The Theater District, 10:30 p.m.

Eight
,
Maybelle, Louisiana, Thursday, 7:00 p.m.

Nine
,
The Theater District, 11:15 p.m.

Ten
, Central Park, 11:55 p.m.

Eleven
,
Bethesda Terrace, Midnight

Twelve
,
Bethesda Terrace, 12:15 a.m.

Thirteen
,
The Marketplace, 1:00 a.m.

Fourteen
,
The Realm—Outside the Palace, Soon Afterward

Fifteen
,
Bethesda Terrace, 1:25 a.m.

Sixteen
,
The Palace, Soon Afterward

Seventeen
,
Elsewhere in the Realm, Meanwhile

Eighteen
,
Elsewhere in the Realm, Meanwhile

Nineteen
,
The Fairy Camp, Soon Afterward

Twenty
,
The Mountains, A Little Later

Twenty-one
,
The Realm, Later

Twenty-two
,
Fiontan and Niamh’s Hall, Soon Afterward

Twenty-three
,
The Realm—The Edge of the Great Forest, Later

Twenty-four
,
The Realm—Approaching the Castle, A Moment Later

Twenty-five
,
Outside the Palace, Meanwhile

Twenty-six
,
At the Foot of the Tower, A Moment Later

Twenty-seven
,
Outside the Impostor’s Palace, A Moment Later

Twenty-eight
,
Somewhere in the Realm, Meanwhile

Twenty-nine
,
Outside the Impostor’s Palace, A Moment Later

Thirty
,
The Forest, A Moment Later

Thirty-one
,
Inside the Fake Throne Room, Meanwhile

Thirty-two
,
The Borderlands, Immediately Afterward

Thirty-three
,
The Throne Room, Meanwhile

Thirty-four
,
The Palace Doors, Meanwhile

Thirty-five
,
The Throne Room, Next

Thirty-six
,
Elsewhere in the Throne Room, Meanwhile

Thirty-seven
,
The Dais, Meanwhile

Thirty-eight
,
Outside the Palace, Meanwhile

Thirty-nine
,
The Mound, Next

Forty
,
The Throne Stone, Next

Forty-one
,
By the Throne Stone, Next

Forty-two
,
The Throne Stone, Meanwhile

Forty-three
,
The Throne Stone, Meanwhile

Forty-four
,
Outside the Palace, Next

Forty-five
,
Riverside Park, Meanwhile

Forty-six
,
Maybelle, Louisiana, Friday, 5:00 a.m.

About This Series

An excerpt from
Rebel Mechanics

About The Author

Also by Shanna Swendson

Central Park—New York City

Wednesday, 1:00 p.m.

Michael Murray ducked under the crime scene tape his partner held up for him and asked the uniformed officer at the scene, “What’ve you got, Milton?”

“Dead body. You’ll have to wait for the ME to know if it’s natural causes or not, but it
is
weird.”

“Define weird.” Michael’s threshold for “weird” had shifted radically in the last couple of months.

“See for yourself.” Milton gestured toward the body lying sprawled in the grass nearby.

At first, Michael didn’t notice anything obviously out of the ordinary. Then again, he didn’t consider fairies and magic to be all that strange, these days. It was his partner, Marisol Lopez, who spotted the anomaly. “Well, they do say that disco is dead,” she quipped.

That’s
what was strange. The body looked like it had fallen through a time warp from sometime around 1977. It wore tight white bell-bottom trousers and a shiny shirt with a huge collar. The clothes looked new, but the body didn’t. Michael guessed that the dead man was in his sixties, old enough that he might have worn these clothes back in the heyday of disco when he was of an age to hit the town for a little Saturday-night fever.

“This stuff isn’t coming back in style, is it?” Michael asked Mari.

“God, I hope not,” she replied, then winced. “Sorry. I guess I owe a dollar.”

“I’ll just stand over here where the lightning bolt won’t hit me.” Michael had given up trying to talk his colleagues out of teasing him for his goody-goody reputation by charging a fine for swearing or irreverence in front of him. At least it meant the precinct got a free lunch every so often when they emptied the penalty jar.

Michael leaned closer over the body. The dead man looked aged, but not weathered, and his skin was so pale that either he was religious about wearing really good sunblock or he hadn’t seen the sun in decades. Even his hands were free of liver spots. His hair was white, but worn in a longish, feathered style that matched his wardrobe.

“He looks scared,” Mari commented as she, too, studied the body. “And not just ‘Ay! My heart!’ scared.”

“Detectives!” Milton called out. Michael looked up to see a few uniforms struggling with a man dressed similarly to the dead man. He looked to be about the same age, with the same lack of weathering. “We just found this guy hiding in the bushes over there. Think maybe they’re connected?”

Michael and Mari went over to the captive, who looked nearly as frightened as the dead man. “Please, let me go back!” he babbled. “I’ll be good, I promise! Let me back in. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t like getting old.”

“What’s he talking about?” Mari asked.

“No telling,” Milton said. “I don’t smell booze on him. Actually, he smells pretty good for a guy wandering through the park and babbling.”

“Sir, do you know that dead man over there?” Michael asked.

The man’s eyes filled with tears. “He’s my brother.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Did you see what happened to him?”

“They made us leave.” His voice broke. “We were happy, but they sent us away, and then we got old.” His eyes went wild—wilder—with terror. “Are they still coming after us?”

“He may not be drunk, but I bet a tox screen comes up with something,” Mari muttered.

“Should we take him in?” Milton asked.

“Yeah, at the very least he’s a person of interest, and we probably need to get him some medical attention,” Michael said. He had a funny feeling, though, that the tox screen would come up clean. There was something about this man that seemed familiar, an aura he could barely detect. When he slipped his hand into his pocket and clutched his keychain, the aura became stronger, almost a halo.

“Is something wrong, Rev?” Mari asked him.

“You mean other than the dead body?”

“The dead body is all in a day’s work. You look troubled.”

He rubbed his shoulder. “My old PTSD is acting up again.”

“You should get that looked at. But while you have your flashback, or whatever, I’m gonna take a look around. Let me know if you need a hug or a slap.”

“Will do,” he replied, his voice already trailing off because of what he’d just noticed. The park around him was full of fae creatures, but he was getting used to seeing that. What caught his eye was another man sitting with his back against a tree. Milton and his buddies had walked right past him without noting a potential witness. Michael squeezed his keychain again and the closer contact with the laminated four-leaf clover in the middle of it showed him the reason why. It was a fairy not even bothering with a human glamour. In fact, he looked like he was barely able to conceal himself from humans. Not that most humans would have recognized him as a fairy if they’d seen him.

Real fairies weren’t the cute winged creatures of little girls’ Halloween costumes. They looked more or less human—both more and less. They were too beautiful, too ephemeral, and too odd to be truly human, with the kind of coloring that didn’t occur in nature. And that was just what Michael could see. He had a feeling that even with his enhanced senses, he couldn’t see down to the heart of what they truly looked like.

Pretending he was looking for clues on the ground, Michael made his way over to the fairy and crouched beside him. “So, what’s your story?” he asked. “I take it you have something to do with those two.” He gestured with his head toward the body and the man who was being put in the back of a squad car.

The fairy blinked in surprise. “You see me?”

“Four-leaf clover. And I’ve spent a little time in the Realm. I’m friends with the queen.”

That got a reaction. “I’ve done nothing wrong!” the fairy insisted frantically. “I don’t deserve exile. You must tell her majesty.”

“Exile? The queen cast you out, and those men?” That didn’t sound like something Sophie Drake, the current queen of the fairy realm, would have ordered, Michael thought. She hadn’t shown any signs of forcing anyone out. In fact, Michael was getting a little frustrated with her about that. On the other hand, the fairy looked terrified, which was common in people who’d dealt with Sophie.

“Her men did, under her name. The humans had to go, as did others who refused to swear fealty.” He jerked, startled and whipped his head around like he was looking for pursuers. “They’re still after me,” he said in an anguished whisper as he clutched at Michael’s arm. “And I am so weak in daylight.”

Michael would have said the fairy was paranoid, but he sensed something malevolent. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, so none of the nearby police had noticed, but Michael felt it, and he wasn’t armed against the fae. He hadn’t thought it necessary in daylight. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching him, he reached into his coat pocket and brought out the half-eaten sandwich from his interrupted lunch. “Please accept this offering,” he said, holding the sandwich out to the fairy.

The fairy accepted it greedily, without thanks, unwrapped it, and gobbled it up. Then he suddenly stood and whirled, emanating a flash of something that looked like an almost-visible sound wave. The sense of threat dissipated, and the fairy ran away without a word to Michael.

Michael took a moment to catch his breath and had just risen to his feet when Mari approached.

“Find something?” she asked.

Since she didn’t mention the odd man Michael had just been talking to or the brief magical battle, he assumed she hadn’t noticed any of it. “I thought I saw something on the ground, but it was nothing.”

Her phone rang, and he took advantage of that opportunity to place a phone call of his own. Turning his back to his partner and walking a few yards away, he found the number in his directory. As usual, the call went into voice mail after three rings. “Sophie, it’s Michael Murray. I have a question for you,” he said after the tone. “And no, it’s not about Jen, though that deadline
is
getting awfully close. I’m working on a case that may fall into your Realm. That’s the one with the capital R. Call me, please.”