Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

We hopped off a tram a few minutes’ walk from the popular Union Square and its nearby big-brand stores. Victor led the way, even though he’d rarely walked the street and much preferred to be chauffeured around, he’d explained, earning Zee’s exaggerated eyeroll.

“Do you know every evil villain in this city?” Zee asked, striding along the sidewalk behind us. He’d hidden his wings, but not his horns. A handful of people ambled down the street, heading home from late-night bars.

“Agatha is neither evil nor a villain. She is a shrewd businesswoman.”

“That’s what a villain would say. Are you defending Tinkerbell after she tried to drown you and threatened to cut off my dick?”

“Not at all. While I do not agree with her business practices, I cannot judge her as a villain when I have done worse in the past.”

“Hold up.” Zee scooted closer, wedging himself between us and almost knocking Victor off the curb. “Have you cut off dicks?”

“My forte was always torture.” He let the unsaid answer for him.

Zee breathed in through his nose, his nostrils flaring. “Fuck.” He held his breath, then after a few strides, puffed out, “ Why is that so hot? That should be the fucking opposite of hot. But when you do it, it’s fuckin’ lust on steroids. I am broken. You have broken me.”

With Zee discussing all the ways Victor’s old profession was hot, we rounded the end of the block and entered a street aglow with designer brands. Several jewelry stores glittered behind window barriers. One of them being Silverleaf Goldsmiths by FaeMade ? . Exactly the kind of name you’d expect a chain of fae-owned jewelry stores to trade under.

The late hour meant nobody was around.

“There’s a camera to our right. Keep walking. Keep your heads down. Don’t look up,” Victor reeled off. “It’s too high up to tamper with, but it’s also pointed farther down the street, so we should be safe from detection.”

A rush of adrenaline had my heart pounding. For the first time since learning I’d lost my power to Cain, it felt as though we were making progress. If we found something in this store that tied Agatha to Cain, then it would be a lead. And if we could get the bead from Agatha, we wouldn’t even need to go up against Cain. But I was getting ahead of myself. First, we needed to know if Sebastien’s educated guess about Agatha’s work to set the bead into ward-infused jewelry was correct.

The Silverleaf store had two large windows, and an alcove front porch tucked out of the camera’s view. Victor and I stopped to pretend to admire the cushions of earrings, watches, and necklaces, while Zee hopped into the recessed doorway.

“I’m not sensing wards,” Zee whispered.

“If she’s selling ward-infused jewelry, she won’t have wards protecting the building,” Victor explained. “Too many wards in one small space will create a feedback loop, rendering all of them useless.”

“Anyone about?” Zee asked.

I discreetly took a look up and down the street. The streetlights were spaced far apart, and most of the ambient light came from the storefronts. But no people. “Nope. You’re good.”

After tugging on the black mask he’d used when saving pets from pies—the mask with sock-like sleeves attached to cover his horns—he poofed inside, appearing behind the cashier’s counter. Despite the mask hiding his face, his tail and general Zeeness made him pretty distinctive, at least to me, but as long as he didn’t disturb too much, nobody would ever need to know we’d been here.

Zee took a second to get his bearings, then began rummaging through drawers in the fitted storage units making up the rear wall. Mirrors and lights spotlighted his scurrying.

I touched the glass and whispered, “Found anything yet?”

“Oh yeah, sure. I’ve got everything I need,” he stage-whispered back, not really whispering at all. “I’m just hanging out, soaking up the vibe of the place. No, babycakes. I’ve been here three seconds. I have not found anything yet.”

Yeah, okay, a stupid question. Victor plucked my hand off the window, and wiped the glass with his sleeve. “Forensic evidence.”

Right. Don’t touch anything. Zee had gloves on too. They were good at this. “You know... we could raid the place, steal all the jewelry, and head south? Cross the border... live happily ever after in Mexico?”

Victor’s lips twitched into a smile. “If I believed you were serious I might take you up on that offer.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Tom would get real mad at being left behind, and I don’t wanna get on the wrong side of an angry djinn who can whip up noxious poisons in his sleep.”

“I’m not finding anything!” Zee spun, but forgot his tail was loose. The swish smacked a little display of rings off the counter, sending them flying. Zee jumped at the sound, and spun again, whipping his tail around, clearing the contents of a second display shelf in the process. The whole lot crashed to the floor with a startling cacophony.

“Oh dear,” Victor said, beating me to it. “He really does not do subtle.”

“I know, but he tries.”

“Fuck!” He grabbed his tail, stopping its assault on anything shiny, then spotted something on the floor. “Ooh baby, look at you.”

“Zodiac, we’re here for a reason,” Victor warned. “Focus on the task at hand.”

He was focused—on something shiny. “Come to Uncle Zee,” he sang, then ducked behind the counter. When he reappeared, he had a signet ring pinched between his fingers. A ring that looked a whole lot like the anti-ward ring I had. Gideon’s ring. He slid it onto his gloved finger and vanished—not like when he translocated vanished, which always left a splash of sparks behind—I’d blinked and he was just gone.

Pressing both hands against the window, I smooshed my face closer. “Where’d he go?”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. He scanned the store interior. “I do not know.”

A tray of earrings took a dive off a shelf. A drawer opened, then slammed shut, all by itself.

“Oh, hello locked drawer,” Zee’s disembodied voice said. “Abraca-fuck-yah.” A cupboard in the back wall buckled and jerked open. Rolls of paper spilled out, apparently all by themselves. One of those rolls hung in the air and unrolled itself.

“He doesn’t know he’s invisible,” Victor said, eyes widening.

A blast of blue ink exploded out of the cupboard, painting the outline of a Zee ghost, highlighting his silhouette like a stencil a kid draws around to sketch a basic demon shape. Zee’s transparent smudge floated over to the window and slammed the document against the glass. “Get a good look, Daddy. Use that photographic memory of yours ’cause I’m compromised, covered in ink, and we’re fuckin’ done.”

Victor blinked, scanned the document, and nodded. “Good, now let’s go.”

“Al-fuckin’-right.”

Sirens sounded somewhere far off—probably not for us, but if the safe had been booby-trapped with ink, then it could also have a silent alarm. “Guys, we really need to go, now .”

The Zee ghost poofed onto the front step and—I assume—gave himself a shake, as blue ink rained in all directions. A few splatters dashed my shirt. At least it wasn’t blood, or squashed demon-general guts, or portal goo. As misadventures went, my shirt might survive this one.

“Ugh, not a fan of blue.” Zee’s voice floated . “Why are you looking at me like I’ve got three horns?”

“You’re invisible,” I said. “Kind of.”

“I’m in-what-now?”

The sirens grew louder, either carried on the breeze or getting real close.

“Never mind,” Victor grabbed Zee’s weirdly semi-transparent, ink-splattered arm and hurried us along. “We’ll discuss it later.”

Inky bootprints glowed on the sidewalk. “He’s leaving a trail of ink behind.”

Victor’s sigh was heavy with reluctance. “Give me your mask.”

“Huh?”

“I assume you’re still wearing the gimp mask, Zodiac? Please, hand it over.”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Zee tore off the mask—at least, I think he did, as the ink splatters on his face vanished. “Hello? Take it then?”

“I cannot see it,” Victor grumbled through gritted teeth.

“What the fuck? It’s right front of your face ? —”

Victor took a swipe at the air, and snatched the mask from Zee’s grip, which made it appear in his hand, covered in blue ink.

“What are you—” I began, then stopped when Victor pulled the mask over his head. He didn’t have horns, so the elongated horn-socks flopped down either side of his head like two sad dreadlocks. “Go. Get Adam to safety. I’ll delay and distract the authorities.”

“Distracting is my thing,” Zee whined.

“Except you’re somehow both invisible and highly visible right now, and unable to fly. You’re at a disadvantage.” Victor glanced toward the sounds of incoming cops, making the floppy socks swing. “Just go. I’ll meet you back at the hotel in a few hours.”

I made a grab for where I suspected Zee’s arm might be and caught his sleeve. “Let’s go, Zee.”

“Lovin’ the gimp look, Vampire Daddy. Definitely keep that on for later ? —”

“I prefer dominance to submission,” Victor said, voice muffled by the mask, then blurred out of sight, probably setting himself up somewhere high to ambush the unsuspecting police.

We hurried off, taking a few random turns, then out of sight from cameras and any prying eyes, I pulled Zee to a stop. “Hold up, Zee. Maybe take off the ring for a second?”

“What ring?”

“The ring you picked up in the store?”

“Oh, that ring.” He must have pulled the ring off, because Zee’s solid, ink-covered glory shimmered back into sight. “This one?”

I took it from him and squinted at it under the pale streetlight. It was definitely a Gideon Cain ring. Agatha was his personal jeweler then, just as Seb had said. She probably designed and made all his rings, and those he handed out to his subordinates like candy. “Here. Put it back on.”

“Sure.” He took the ring back and slid it back on, and this time even the ink splatters disappeared. He’d gone.

“Wow.”

“What?”

“You’re invisible.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“I see me.” I imagined him looking at his own hands. So the ring only masked him from others—not himself. It also seemed to mask anything he was wearing or holding at the time he put the ring on, which was why the ink had vanished this time, but not before.

I slowly extended a finger and jabbed. My finger buckled against something warm and hard.

“Watch what you’re poking, Kitten,” Zee purred. “Should we take the bling back?”

“No... We’ll borrow it. It might be useful. Keep it on until we get home. If the cops see us, they’ll be looking for a human with a tall demon coated in ink. I’m just a boring human walking all by myself.”

“Good plan.”

“Let’s grab a tram.” I led the way out of the alley, toward the tramstop.

“Are you sure I’m invisible?” Zee asked after a while, his voice floating.

“Yup. Watch.” We caught a tram, and hopped on. I paid for a ticket, but Zee passed by without the driver or any of the other late-night passengers noticing him. Nobody ignored Zee—ever.

I sat, and the seat dipped next to me. “I don’t like it,” his small grumbly voice said beside me. “You live like this? Trying to be invisible?”

“I guess. I mean, I tried to.”

“It’s horrible.”

“It’s not so bad... when you’re trying to hide.”

“Ugh. I can feel myself being forgotten. It’s like being in the shadow realm all over again.”

“You can take it off when we get home, or we’ll have to pay for a ticket and answer a lot of questions about why you’re covered in ink.”

“At least we found Gideon’s plans.”

“What did you find?”

A fellow passenger glanced over, prompting my innocent smile. They probably thought I was a crazy person, riding trams at night alone, muttering to myself.

“Sketches of a locket on a chain,” Zee said. “Looked like a tiny cage. It had Gideon Cain’s name stamped on it.”

Then Seb’s guess was a good one. “Agatha is our route to getting my power back.”

But our run-in with her hadn’t been friendly before, and she was unlikely to help us out of the goodness of her heart. We’d have to make it so she had no choice. But how? She’d told us Gideon was powerful. It was going to take a lot for her to switch sides. “Do you think Victor knows how to get to her?”

“Probably. You think him and Tinkerbell fucked?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t seem his type.”

“But a twinky human and his worst enemy are?”

I snorted. It did seem crazy, but it worked. “Yeah, we are.”

The weight of Zee’s head settled on my shoulder. “I miss sleeping with you. Not just the fucking. I miss the sleeping part, and the waking up with you tucked against me part... yah know? I’ve never had that before.”

I reached out and guesstimated where his leg might be. Whatever part of him I’d found seemed pretty firm so I gave it a comforting squeeze. “I miss it too.”

“That’s my cock, Kitten. But don’t stop. Fuck, we could get up to all sorts of sexy shenanigans if you had a ring too. Like two horny ghosts.”

I laughed and removed my hand, earning another sideways glance from the concerned passenger.

Zee promptly plonked my hand back, this time on his thigh—at least, it felt firm and thick, like a thigh. “You know what else I’ve never had?” he asked, sounding wistful. “Dreams of a future, where it’s just me and you and Daddy Spice, living our lives, being who we want to be... Is it crazy to want that?”

“No, I want that too,” I reassured him. And we’d have it. Maybe.

But only if we stopped Gideon Cain.