Chapter 2

It"s almost seven in the evening by the time Alistair pulls the antique Land Rover to a stop by the front door of Andreas"s house…my home.

Caspian squeezes my hand. "Want me to come with you to talk to him?"

I shake my head and sigh. "No. I mean, yes, of course. But you"re a vampire and he"s fae, for one thing, he"s been my parent figure for the last few months, for another, and he"s absolutely going to smell or otherwise sense the sex on us." I blush, because in this case, "us" means more than just Caspian and me. "And also, I think this is just one of those conversations that needs to be just him and me. So as much as yes, I absolutely want you there with me because I"m nervous and scared, I think it"s best I go in alone this time."

He nods. "I understand. Call me?"

I laugh. I don"t think phones are going to be necessary anymore, do you?

He chuckles out loud. "No, I guess not," he answers, out loud as well. "I"ll see you soon, yeah?"

I lean into him, cup his face with both hands and kiss him. Deeply, passionately, claiming his tongue, tasting his teeth and taking his breath. "Yes. You will see all of me, very, very soon, my bloodmate."

Stirling, sitting up front beside Alistair, twists to look at me, a hot, satisfied smirk still gracing his handsome face. "See you soon, Little Sparrow."

I"m seated on the left side of the second row, behind the driver"s seat, with Caspian in the middle, and Fin on the far right.

Fin reaches past Caspian to cup my jaw in a strong but gentle grip. "I"m gonna need another taste of that sunshine in your veins, Little Sparrow." His eyes flare black briefly, and I feel a rush of arousal flood my core, desire roaring in my veins. "Feel me?"

I twist my chin down and nab his thumb with my teeth, grinning at him with a lascivious smirk on my lips and a promising grin on my face. "Yeah, Fin, I feel you."

Alistair meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. I see the need in his eyes, there and gone, quickly buried. "Be safe, Maeve," he says. "Don"t be long. You"re safer with us for right now, and I believe Andreas will recognize that. But he has answers you need and deserve. Just…pay attention to your feelings. If you sense danger, listen to it. Use whatever powers or abilities you have to stay free and stay safe. The Tribunal doesn"t own you and you don"t owe them or anyone anything."

"I hear you, Alistair," I say out loud. Directly to his mind, then: I have a father figure already. I don"t need or want you to be that for me. Do you understand what I"m saying?

Yes, Maeve, I do. I"m just not sure if I can go there. It"s not you, I"ve just…I don"t know, my dearest one. I don"t know.

I understand. Out loud, then: "Thanks, everyone, for…well, everything. I"ll come over as soon as I can."

I tug my knit watchcap on, slip sunglasses onto my face, pull my hood up, and then accept my bag and purse from Caspian as I exit the SUV. I give them a wave and head for the house.

It"s dark. No lights burn from any of the windows, even though Andreas"s truck is parked near the door in its usual spot. Being winter, it"s fully dark, yet I can see as well as if it were daylight. The difference is hard to explain. I am aware it"s night, I can see the pools of shadow and the swaths of moonlight, but some part of my now-different physiology just somehow interprets the darkness as less dark.

I ease up the steps, pull the screen door open, and try the main door—unlocked. I let myself in, close the door behind me, and scan the interior of the home. The only light comes from a three-wick candle which wreathes the air with the redolent mingled scents of vanilla and pine. The candle flames stand still and straight, unmoving, triple yellow tongues of light.

The dim golden light gleams off of a glass tumbler half-full of whiskey resting on the small side table, which stands beside Andreas"s favorite easy chair facing the unlit fireplace.

Andreas is slouched in the chair, one fingertip slowly circling the rim of the tumbler; where his finger travels, the amber liquid glows subtly and swirls gently.

His eyes fix on me. Silence unfurls between us.

"Sit." The single word is a command, infused with the authority of a quasi-parental figure and the stern tone of a cop accustomed to being obeyed.

He points at the couch, and I gingerly perch on the edge of the cushion, angled to face him.

He isn"t angry. I just don"t know what he"s feeling—he"s utterly opaque to me at this moment.

"Take off the hat, sunglasses, and hood please, Maeve." Another cop statement, phrased as a request but with no room for mistaking it as the command it is.

I hesitate. What if I"m wrong? What if Andreas isn't fae? What does he know, if he is? Did he really know my mom? What if he isn"t? How can I reveal myself to him, if he isn"t? How do I know?

I mean, the absent-minded trick with the whiskey is a pretty good giveaway, but how can I be sure?

Andreas sighs. "Your caution is admirable, but now I"m going to have to recast the glamour in the morning."

He rubs his thumbs against the forefingers and middle fingers of both hands, whispering softly to himself words I can't quite make out.

The words themselves mean nothing to me, but as the word-sounds wash over my ears and settle into my spirit, something within me recognizes the power in them. Yet, the power is not in the words, I realize. The words, the gestures, they"re a focus for the power emanating from within Andreas.

On the last syllable, he brings his index fingers together parallel, touching, vertically in front of his face, the rest of his fingers tucked into fists; as the final whispered word-sound echoes from his lips—and, indeed, the words do echo strangely, not exactly off the walls or ceiling, but in my mind and ears and soul, all at once—he rips his fingers apart as if tearing open a curtain.

There is a brief flare of golden-white light that surrounds and subsumes his features, hiding him in a glowing halo which reminds me of nothing so much as the paintings and frescoes of saints and religious figures.

After a moment or two, the light fades and Andreas remains…now fully fae in appearance.

His swarthy, sun-browned skin glows with the golden-white light I now associate with fae magic. His eyes, normally a warm chocolate brown, are partially whited-out, the whites luminous and nearly overtaking and obscuring his pupils and irises. His ears are pointed.

He is visibly, obviously fae. His body is slimmer, sleeker, not as heavily muscled as when he"s glamoured to look mortal. His face is sharper-featured, more vulpine.

Most noticeable, however, is the aura of magic radiating off of him in such a thick, potent cloud that I can taste it. I can almost see it surrounding him like a fog.

Actually—I focus, concentrating my attention…I feel something in my brain click, and now I can see the cloud of magic around him, a swirling, chaotic ball of brilliant golden-white light, streaks of light, motes of light, smears and dots, patches and pools coruscating around him. I squint and realize that it"s not a ball of light, but rather more of a helix shape, as if he"s standing in the center of a strand of DNA writ god-sized.

"Maeve," he growls, his voice low and impatient. "The glasses. The hat. Show me yourself. Please."

Slowly, reluctantly, nerves firing in my gut, I tug the glasses off, the hood, and the hat. I lift my face to him, open my eyes, and bare my teeth…my vampire"s fangs.

Andreas"s eyes fly wide. "Holy fuck."

I"m still glowing—I drank a lot of blood over the last twelve hours and drained a lot of vitality. My skin, despite the golden-white glow of fae magic, is paler than his, even blooded and full of vitality—with a mineral sheen to it, like ivory or porcelain. If I were to be completely unblooded, assuming the fae portion of my anatomy allows such a thing, my skin would resemble nothing so much as a marble statue.

Andreas is staring at me, eyes wide and unblinking, jaw slack with raw shock. "Holy shit."

I take a shaky, nervous breath. "Yeah."

Andreas rises from the easy chair and drifts to the fireplace, resting a forearm on the mantle and dropping his forehead to his forearm.

"Oh, Eliza," he whispers, to himself more than me.

I let the silence reign, let Andreas use the time he needs to process whatever he"s feeling, which seems to be a lot, and intense. After a minute or so, he drifts back to the chair but doesn"t sit, instead grabbing his tumbler and draining it in three sharp swallows, setting the glass back down with a rough clack of glass on wood and a burning-throat hiss.

His eyes finally flit back to me. "Of all the possibilities we considered, this wasn"t one of them."

"You knew?" I breathe. "You knew I wasn"t a mortal?"

"Yes," he answers. "I knew you were…something. Not what, but something."

"You"re not my father, are you?"

He shakes his head. "No, Maeve, I"m not." He glances at me, his expression rippling with a quickly changing parade of complex emotions—love, concern, fear, worry, anger. "It was the only thing I could think of that would get you to come with me. You needed to be taken care of, and I truly did love your mother. So no, I"m not your father, obviously, but everything else I told you was true, and I truly do care for you in a fatherly way."

I manage a weak smile for him. "I understand why you lied about it, Andreas, truly. I"m not upset about that. I get it." I examine the back of my hand, using my heightened senses to pick out the swirl of magic emanating from my own skin. "Who is, or was, my father?"

He shakes his head, taking his tumbler to the kitchen. "I never knew."

Andreas opens the cabinet over the refrigerator and pulls down a square clear glass bottle with a cork stopper. He tugs the cork free with his teeth and pours two fingers of glowing amber liquid into the glass. The whiskey in the bottle glows more brightly in the bottle than it does once it"s been poured. The bottle bears no label and moves as if it"s considerably more viscous than normal whiskey, sloshing around more like syrup than water.

"What kind of whiskey is that, Andreas?" I ask.

He takes a sip. "Not whiskey," he answers, voice hoarse from the burn. "Or, not exactly, not anymore. It"s called ambrosia. It"s an ancient fae liquor. It begins as whiskey, distilled in the same way, but once it"s in the barrel, it"s imbued with vitality—magic. Again and again as it ages, fae distillers imbue magic into the barrels until the whiskey is as much liquid magic as it is alcohol."

"So what the ancient Greeks called ambrosia…"

He lifts the glass. "Was this."

"What does it do?"

He tips his head to one side, considering. "Well, it"s still liquor, so it does what alcohol does—gets you drunk. But the magic in it…well, I'm not sure how much you know about fae, so…" he shakes his head, shrugging. "It can replenish your vitality if you"re low. Meaning, restore the magic that makes us fae what we are. If you"re not low it has an effect kind of like being drunk, but different. Makes you see magic without having to concentrate. Makes you sort of unable to control your glamours, if you have enough. A fae drunk on ambrosia is dangerous because his or her magic can go haywire, out of control."

"What would happen if a mortal drank it? Or a vampire?"

"Or you?" He gets another tumbler from the cabinet beside the refrigerator, pours a small measure into the glass, and brings it to me. "Try it. I don"t know what it"ll do to you. Mortals it would kill. The vitality would overload their delicate little mortal system and just shut their body down. Their organs, their spirit, everything. I"ve seen it, and it"s not pretty. Vampires? I have no clue. Probably nothing—it would just be regular whiskey, I"d imagine, assuming they drank it while blooded, and I doubt they could drink it all while unblooded."

I take a tentative sip—I don"t have a lot of experience with alcohol. The first touch to my lips and I taste honey, but as if it were lit on fire. I lick my lips and taste fire and honey and sunlight. Magic flares within me, the glow around me brightening. I take an actual swallow, then, and feel burning honey coating my throat, limning my stomach with light and fury and heat and distilled vitality. It hits my belly and seems to expand, heating from a dull glow to a roaring inferno. My throat stings, and then burns; the flare of magic becomes an unbearable volcano.

I"m dizzy. Magic burns inside me, boils, builds.

"Andreas," I whisper, voice scorched into a hoarse rough scrape. "I need to…shit. Shit!"

My hands glow—bright, and then blinding, and then brighter than the sun. I"m on fire. My blood is boiling. Magic surges in my veins.

Drinking that shit was a mistake.

"Help."

Andreas only laughs. "You"re okay. That"s how it feels the first time. Breathe. Breathe down into your belly." I suck in a deep breath, and the air slicks down my throat and cools the burning. "Now, you feel full of magic, yes? Do you feel a pool of it sort of…in your belly, but your metaphysical belly? Not where your food digests, but inside your being?"

I cast my attention inward, and indeed, I do feel the pool of vitality down inside me; if my metaphysical heart is in my chest where my physical heart is, then my magic is down in my metaphysical belly where my anatomical stomach is. It feels…massive. Titanic. Deep, hot, surging with currents, boiling with untapped power. It"s not a pool, there inside me, but an ocean.

"I feel it," I whisper.

"Picture something innocuous, from nature. A flower, perhaps. What"s your favorite flower?"

"Tulips," I murmur.

I"m still attuned to the ocean of power within me; it feels like…god, I can almost see it, in my mind"s eye, a swirling, eddying, boiling sea of molten magic at the center of my being. It is luminous, brilliant and blinding, vivid golden-white liquid light.

"Visualize a tulip. Say a red one. Picture it as concretely as you can. Imagine, or better yet remember, how it feels to hold one. To smell it. The bright red petals, the brilliant smooth green of the stem. Make it real in your mind." Andreas is murmuring in my ear, his tone soothing, calming, instructive. "Draw on that pool of magic in your belly. Not a lot. Just a droplet."

I hold the image, the memory of a tulip in my mind. Big, red, beautiful—real. I reach a tendril of mental attention down inside, down to the roiling surface of the ocean of power. I touch it—just a droplet. I see it: a single shimmering globule of raw magic lifts free from the sea and rises up, up, up through my chest, up my throat, behind my eyes, and into my mind. It"s golden and white, blazing with its own internal light light a miniature sun.

The droplet touches the image of the flower, and I feel…god, it"s hard to explain the sensation. It feels somewhat like when you hold your breath until your lungs ache and your breath feels like it"s been set on fire, and then you let it out and suck in a dizzying lungful of oxygen. Or, peeing after holding it in for so long your bladder aches and you"re sure you"re going to get a UTI.

The droplet is absorbed by the tulip, but slowly. So slowly, in fact, that I can watch the fabric-like surface of the tulip"s petal dampen, darken, soaking the power up into itself as if the drop of power was truly a bead of liquid.

Once the bead of vitality has vanished, so too does the tulip—there is a soft but distinctly audible POP, like a bursting soap bubble.

I hear an in-drawn breath of shock from Andreas, and I open my eyes and see the tulip from my mind"s eye hovering in the air in front of me, real, discrete—somehow too real, too vivid. The colors are somehow richer, the texture deeper somehow.

The tulip glows subtly with the now-familiar golden-white glow of fae magic. It hovers before me motionless, rock-steady. I reach out a tentative finger, pause a hair"s breadth from the flower, and then touch it.

It"s real.

The stem is smooth and cool and firm, the petals silky and ephemeral. It has a scent. I pluck it from the air, and it has weight.

I look at Andreas, and he shakes his head, marveling. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to learn to do that?" He asks, reaching for the tulip, which I, somewhat reluctantly, let him take from me. "A year. I practiced conjuring glamours every single day, hours a day, for a solid year before I could conjure so much as a leaf, let alone a full, real, vibrant flower like this. Even then, when I finally succeeded, all I managed was a vague approximation of a leaf. It wasn"t solid at all, more translucent, and you couldn"t touch it or it would evaporate."

I feel self-conscious. "I don"t even know what I did, Andreas. It just happened."

He twists the stem of the tulip between his thumb and forefinger. "It"s remarkable, Maeve. But I"m not exactly surprised. Your mother was…" his expression tightens with old pain. "Eliza was a once-in-several-generations talent. Her capacity for vitality was unmatched, and her innate talent and learned skill as a glamourworker were equal to none. I suspect you are far more like her than merely in looks, and you look just like her."

The question I"ve been delaying asking finally pops out. "Did Mom know who my father was?"

He sighs and shakes his head. "No, she didn"t know." He returns the magically conjured tulip to me. "But not for the reason you"d probably, and naturally, assume."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you are not the product of a one-night stand or some other kind of tawdry liason."

I sniff the tulip, and the scent tickles my nose, prompting me to sneeze. Following an urge, I draw another drop of power from the roiling ocean inside me and send it into the tulip, picturing the red flower hovering motionless in the air as it had when I first conjured it. I feel the rush-relief of power surge through me, making my fingertips prickle and my scalp tighten and my lips buzz, and when I release the tulip, it does what I envisioned, hovering stone-still in the air before my face.

I give Andreas a triumphant grin, but it quickly vanishes as the million questions bubbling up in my gut erase the simple joy of glamourworking.

"I think it"s time you tell me what you know, Andreas." I take another tiny, daring sip of ambrosia.

This time, I know what to expect, and the rush-buzz of undiluted magical energy sizzling through my veins and muscles and spirit is a nice, heady distraction from my boiling-over pot of emotions. It passes quickly, and the ocean within me simply absorbs the excess magic.

Andreas takes his tumbler to the living room and sinks into his easy chair, the glass clutched in a fist, eyes vacantly staring into middle distance.

"Yes," he murmurs, half to himself, "I suppose it is." His eyes focus on me as I bring my tumbler of ambrosia to the couch near him. "Has Alistair Taylor told you anything about immortal history?"

I nod. "Yes. He is a professor of history. He explained about The Mortals" War, The Treaty, the ongoing enmity between fae, vampires, and shifters, and the problem of immortal reproduction. The basics, and a general overview of those basics."

Andreas nods. "Good. So I can skip most of that, then."

I frown as a thought occurs to me. "Wait, real quick: you and Alistair are aware of each other, that you"re both immortals, that he"s a vampire and you"re a fae…but you go out of your way to avoid each other?"

Andreas tips his head to one side. "More or less, yes."

"Are you aware of all immortals who live around you? Like, can you sense them or something?"

A sniffed laugh. "No, nothing like that. You just learn to recognize certain tendencies. Vampires especially are creatures of habit and routine. They appreciate the finer things in life and are drawn to old things. Antiques, vintage cars, historical houses. I suppose Alistair recognized me simply because if you know what to look for, it"s rather easy to spot a mask."

"A mask?" I sip ambrosia, and this time the rush is a nice little sizzle. My limbs feel loose, though, and my head feels a bit wobbly. I set the tumbler aside, knowing I"ll need my wits about me for the story Andreas is about to tell.

"A mask is what we call the glamour we fae wear to pass as mortal. I"ll show you how later. For now, as you said, I believe it"s time you knew the truth."