Page 47 of Crown of the Fae King

I overdid it. I didn’t help carry things, and I didn’t climb the stairs more than a few times, but that night, my arm throbbed, and my head felt like it was going to split. In fact, I was sure someone was stomping on my head again when I woke in the middle of the night. But after a few seconds of close listening, I realized the sound I heard was not my brains leaking out of my ears, like I’d dreamt, but something else.

Something hissing at me…from a few blocks away.

The frozen little garden with the little bench…was apparently too far after all.

Still buzzing from the pain pill, I climbed out of bed and got dressed again. My movements drowned out the hissing enough to make it bearable. And when that stopped working, I mumbled and cursed aloud.

My door swung wide. Persi stood in the doorway holding her hands over her ears. “Please tell me you hear that.”

I stood there, stunned, until she came and shook me.

“You do hear it, right? I’m not losing my mind?”

“I…I hear it.”

“Any idea what it is?”

I nodded. “It’s Hank. He thinks…she thinks…it worries I’m trying to get rid of it. I have to…go get it.”

Persi nodded once. “I’ll go with you.”

“Bundle up. It’s a…a few blocks away.”

Swathed in as much wool and leather and yarn as we could get our hands on in the middle of the night, we set out, arm in arm. I didn’t want to think of how horrible the trek might have been if she hadn’t come along.

I finally asked, “Why do you think you can hear Hank?”

“No clue. Obviously, it’s not a Muir witch thing, or Wickham and his sisters would have been up too.”

“And it can’t be an Uncast thing, or Kitch and the MacKenzies would have heard it.”

“Oh, shit!” Persi stopped, so I had to stop, since our arms were still locked. “What if it’s a Fae thing? What if they can hear it?”

We looked at the shadows beyond the puddle of light at the end of the street. She probably expected monsters too.

“If we turn back,” I whispered, “that hissing will never stop.”

Persi laughed. “I just realized…the dead can’t hear.” She started moving again, but I pulled her back.

“What does that mean?”

She let out a big breath that made a massive cloud between us. “I’m saying, considering the beating they got, those guys who…assaulted you in the car…probably never recovered.”

I tried to swallow but couldn’t.

“Listen. We don’t know. It’s just that there was suddenly a tear…in the air…and they were sucked back into the fairy realm. Or somewhere. Like the monsters we killed at the wedding. They just…disappeared.”

I’d heard monsters came to the wedding. I hadn’t wanted to hear the details of what else had happened, worried I wouldn’t believe them--worried I’d thrown my hat in with a bunch of lunatics.

I asked her what happened to the woman with the purple eyes.

Persi shrugged. “I don’t know. Wickham…took her somewhere. He wasn’t gone more than ten minutes. She could be anywhere. But I doubt he left her free to chase after you again. If she can hear Hank, she can’t do anything about it.”

We agreed that neither one of us could stand the hissing long enough to go back for the others. But Persi sent a text to Kitch to tell him where we were and what we were doing. If he wanted to come play hero, he was welcome. About two minutes later, we reached the corner just as Wickham, Urban, and Kitch popped into the shadowed side of the street.

Before any of them could rip into us, Persi explained that we could both hear a hellish hissing noise from Hank, and if they couldn’t hear it too, then they had no room to judge us for wanting that sound to end.

They weren’t happy, but they kept their mouths shut and fell into step behind us as we cut down the next block, found the alley, and then the garden. I moved to the little rock wall and started to kneel, but Wickham grabbed my arm and lifted me up again. “Show me.”

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