Page 47 of Magic Forsaken

“That was fun,” Ari chirped as we melted into the darkness, headed away from the chaos and the questions and staring eyes as my heart pounded with the aftereffects of fear and adrenaline. “I want to do it again.”

“You promised, Little Bug,” I admonished her as we moved along the sidewalk towards the edge of the garden. “No magic where anyone can see you.”

“But we did a good thing.” Logan spoke up unexpectedly. Sometimes he was so quiet that it startled us when he did speak. “We helped someone. Doesn’t that mean it was okay?”

I opened my mouth to remind him about safety. About consequences. And then I snapped it shut again because every word would have made me a hypocrite. Ever since we arrived in Oklahoma City, I’d been taking risks. Doing things I’d sworn never to do, all because it had seemed like the right decision in the moment. Because someone was in need, and if I had the power to help, it would have felt wrong not to.

So how could I tell Logan otherwise?

“Actually, yeah.” I offered him an approving nod and wondered whether I was completely messing everything up or whether these kids had any chance of living a normal life. “You did the right thing. You stopped him, you did it quietly, and you stayed safe. But next time”—I gazed down at Ari while hoping desperately that there would never be a next time—“ask me first, okay?”

We reached the corner and stopped to wait for the crosswalk, and just as the walk sign appeared, I felt Kes freeze beside me.

“Kes?”

She was standing as if transfixed, turned to face Sheridan, gazing across it at a man waiting on the other side.

He stood alone, despite the groups of people coming and going from the park. Several inches taller than most, dressed in dark, austere clothing. A simple jacket over a black t-shirt, with dark jeans and black leather boots.

But that’s where his similarity with the crowds around him ended.

His skin was a dark, steel gray, marred by the faint silver lines of four, strange parallel scars running from his hair to his jawline, interrupted only by the equally severe line of his mouth—cold and unsmiling. His effortlessly styled short hair was white, just like mine. And the light eyes staring at us across four lanes of traffic were a silvery gray that seemed to catch the gleam of a full moon and reflect it back, alight with magic and mystery and… shock.

He was fae.

He had seen us.

And he was clearly in shock.

“Go,” I murmured, grabbing Kes’s hand and tugging her back into the crowd. Back to the east, where the people and the noise might hide us.

Logan and Ari stayed close as we slipped through the chaos, crossing the park and circling around, moving swiftly and with purpose, but never running. Just four people on their way home after a fun night. We crossed the street to the south and went another block before we headed back to the west, towards the hostel. Twice, we ducked into an alley to check for pursuit, and saw nothing, but my heart still pounded uncomfortably.

You never knew with the fae. For some strange reason, this one had chosen to appear unglamoured in a public park, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use that glamour whenever he chose. He could be the homeless woman pushing a shopping cart down Reno, singing softly to herself. He could be the teenage girl smoking outside the gas station.

And we wouldn’t know it until it was too late.

But for now, there was nothing we could do. Nothing but return to the hostel, lock ourselves in our room, and hope it had been a mistake. That he’d seen my hair, and thought I was someone else.

But that hope died when I looked at Kes and caught a glimpse of her expression.

Fear. Pain. Memories. Even a strange glimmer of regret.

“Do you want to…” My question trailed away into silence at the look in her eyes.

“Not now,” she said softly.

So I didn’t press her. We clustered together and returned to the hostel in silence, and only once the kids were safely asleep did Kes curl up in her favorite spot in the window and offer me a glance that suggested she was ready to talk.

“Who was that?” I asked quietly, settling on the floor next to the window with a wince. My muscles were beginning to protest both the unaccustomed work from the night before and being thrown around by a bossy dragon shifter earlier that evening.

“You didn’t recognize him?”

I thought back. Pretty sure I would have remembered if I’d ever met someone with that face. Because even with its coldness and scars, even without glamour to give it that otherworldly edge, it was beautiful. Those eyes, haunted by some painful past… I would have remembered them too.

“No. I don’t think I ever saw him in the compound.”

“Neither did I,” she said with a sigh. “I hoped… I always hoped that was because he had nothing to do with it.”

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