Cate shook her head. She needed to focus.
Get back to the office. Finish the presentation.
That would take her mind off of the fae, at least until this afternoon.
The cell phone in her pocket beeped with an incoming text message. She pulled it out as she chugged up the hill, Rook and his accomplice right beside her.
OMG he’s wicked hot. Off 4 rest of 2day.
Cate huffed in annoyance. She rounded the corner, walking into Westlake Center, and came to a dead stop. Little Miss Big Eyes bumped into the back of her, but Cate barely noticed.
Maya was skipping out on the afternoon all right.
Up ahead, amid the shoppers and traffic, she spotted Maya and her blind date. Maya’s hands curled around the large, sandy-haired guy’s bicep. He was too big to be a surfer, but he had the shaggy longish hair that swept over his forehead, giving him the look of a fallen angel.
Cate’s throat constricted until she could hardly swallow past the tightness. Had he been any regular guy, Cate would have wished Maya well and asked her for details later. The problem was, he wasn’t normal.
And he definitely wasn’t an angel.
He glanced back over his shoulder in Cate’s direction, the iridescent purple-blue flash of his eyes confirming her worst fears. He was one of
them
. And he’d revealed himself in physical form to Maya, which could only mean trouble. Fae didn’t reveal themselves to humans unless they wanted something.
Cate squeezed the phone hard, the tips of her fingers pulsing with the pressure.
“Pretty pretty sees Kallus,” the bobblehead hissed to Rook, so close behind her that Cate felt the fae’s wiry body tremble.
“All she sees is her friend walking away with a man. Kallus is throwing a glamour over the girl.”
But Cate saw much more than that.
A glowing hole ahead opened up, like some giant pair of scissors had ripped open a piece of fabric that looked like the side of the building, peeled it back, and another world altogether lay beyond. Maya was all smiles as Kallus held her hand and helped her step through the rift. And just as quickly as it appeared, the glowing tear mended itself, then winked out of existence.
Cate struggled not to show her panic, even though her heart beat so hard and fast it made it hard to breathe. She could not reveal herself. While there was a good chance the fae would never guess she could see them, she wasn’t about to take any chances. Especially not now.
With years of practice, she’d mastered her reactions. She sighed and turned on her heel like she was pacing, walking straight at the two fae as if she didn’t see them. Rook had a stupid smirk on his face, like some dumbass jock who’d give a thumbs-up to his buddy for scoring. She wanted to knock that smile off his face with a good right hook. Instead she glared straight ahead, her eyes level with his chin. Rook and Little Miss Big Eyes moved out of her way as she passed between them.
“Kallus thinks he can make the king give him honor by capturing human girl as war prize?”
Rook nodded, the smirk fading to a frown. “We have enough trouble. The last thing we need is the Uplanders being alerted to the invasion before it even begins.”
Cate froze. She tapped her foot, wanting to look up so badly and stare Rook down that her muscles burned from her refusal to cooperate.
War prize?
Invasion?
“Come, Phareen. We must speak with the king.”
Cate didn’t look up until they had walked away. A second glowing seam opened in the air, another tear in the fabric of the universe, and Rook and his bobblehead companion stepped through the rift. The torn halves knitted together then disappeared completely.
Her knees gave way and Cate plopped down on the curb, the colorful chaos of the city still swirling around her. The moment the numb buzzing in her brain dimmed, she grabbed her cell and texted Maya.
Saw u. Your blind date’s trouble. B careful.
There was no reply.
And somehow, she knew she was already too late.
Chapter Two
Maya didn’t return Cate’s text. Sure, there were times when a friend might not reply to a text right away, and Cate wouldn’t fault Maya for that under normal circumstances. But these circumstances were far from normal.
A slow tightening sensation spread through Cate’s chest, and her ribs suddenly seemed a size too small to contain her pounding heart, which was threatening to crawl its way into her throat.
There was no way she could just go back to work and pretend everything was hunky-dory. Not when Maya had just been blithely abducted into the faery realm and didn’t even realize what had happened.
Her fingers shaking, Cate stood, glanced around to make sure no fae were paying any attention to her, then speed-dialed her sister. It rang twice before Maggie answered.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Her sister’s voice was comforting and irritating at the same time—it was so damn bouncy and carefree when Cate felt neither.
“They’ve taken Maya,” she answered, her tone short, clipped, agitated. She climbed aboard a bus headed for the arboretum.
A long pause made Cate wonder if perhaps the call had dropped as she settled into the seat with the most space around it and turned to glance out the window. Small, agile fae—similar to the one who’d been snuffling around in Maya’s cleavage not half an hour before—scampered along the wires that ran the electric buses downtown. “Maggie, did you hear me? They—”
“I heard you.” All traces of lightness in Maggie’s voice had evaporated completely. An even longer pause caused Cate’s stomach to dip uncomfortably. “Are you sure?”
Cate dropped her voice to an almost whisper, covering her mouth so none of the fae within visual distance could read her lips. “I watched her step into the rift with one of them.”
“Not you-know-who?”
“No.”
Maggie’s relieved sigh rippled over her. “Good. Well, not good, but better than it could have been. If
he’d
been involved, it would’ve been you.”
The hopeless tightness in Cate’s chest released, replaced by the slow burn of rage. Maggie was the only sister to whom she’d mentioned Rook. She’d often acted as Cate’s second set of eyes, watching out for when he came around. But at times her sister had seemed both protective and oddly a bit jealous of Rook’s interest in her. “My best friend is
gone
. How can you say that?”
“Because it happens every day.”
“Not to someone we know.” Cate heard the bitter tone in her own voice. She sank deeper into the seat.
“Look, right now there are probably a hundred thousand people who’ve disappeared without a trace. You damn well know a good chunk of those are fae abductions. The only thing that makes today different than any other day was that this time we know who was taken.”
“And where.” There had to be a way to enter. Midsummer’s Eve, when the rift between Earth and the fae realm became passable by humans without assistance, was only twelve hours away. But anything could happen to Maya in that time on the fae side. Hell, in just a matter of an hour, Maya could inadvertently do something stupid enough to get her stuck there permanently.
After all she’d seen, Cate couldn’t stomach abandoning her friend to the fae. She had to get her out. There. One decision made. She was going into the fae realm to get Maya.
The movement of Maggie’s cheek against the phone made a scratching sound. Cate could see her shaking her head. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t even think about it. You are
not
going after her.”
Cate huffed. She hated that she was so transparent to Maggie. Her sister didn’t even need to freakin’ see her to know what she was thinking. “I can’t just sit back and let them take her.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
“Give me one good rea—”
“Because people don’t come back. The rules are there for a reason, Cate. Not just to give you something to chafe against. Do. Not. Engage. Period.”
Cate’s cheeks burned. “You’re beginning to sound like Gran. Look, I don’t need a lecture; I need help. I have to find a way to get Maya back.”
“
No
, you don’t.”
“She’s my friend.”
“And
we’re
your family.”
For a second Cate wished she had superpowers and could crush her cell phone to powder. Anything to get rid of her growing frustration and anger. “Are you going to help me find a way to save Maya or not?”
She got off the bus at the arboretum and crossed into the shaded and green spaces, where the sea breeze rustled the leaves of the towering trees and traced soothing fingers over her heated skin.
Her sister’s long pause spoke volumes.
“No,” Maggie answered finally, her voice firm. “I’m sorry. I can’t take that risk. I know you care about Maya, but you’re my sister and I won’t risk losing you too.”
Maggie’s words shot a dart of pain through Cate’s chest. Out of all the O’Connell girls, Cate, as the oldest, had felt the loss of their mother most keenly. She’d been the one with the clearest memories of her, and sometimes she secretly wondered if Maggie and Clare held a slight resentment over that fact. Jane had been too young to remember much at all, and she really didn’t care so much as long as she had her older sisters and Gran. While the three rules had always been part of their lives, Gran became far stricter about enforcing them once their mother had disappeared. The O’Connell women were an entity unto themselves.
“I get it,” Cate mumbled. Maggie wasn’t coldhearted. In fact, exactly the opposite; she cared so much she was afraid of getting hurt by more loss, and Cate couldn’t fault her for that. But it didn’t change what she needed to do.
“Love you.” For a brief moment she wondered if Maggie could hear her saying good-bye as well.
“Love you too.” By the choked-up sound in Maggie’s voice, Cate could tell she had. Out of all the sisters, she and Maggie had always been closest, and Maggie knew her well enough to know once she put her mind to something, she wouldn’t be stopped.
Cate hung up and slumped down into the green grass, letting the cool slim blades of it tickle the skin of her bare legs. Calling her office and claiming she’d gotten sick at lunch wasn’t too far of a stretch. There was only one person she could think of who’d know where the blond fae had taken Maya, and if she had an ice cube’s chance in hell of getting her best friend back before Midsummer’s Eve ended, she’d need to get his help.
She needed to seduce Rook. In less than twenty-four hours. By sunrise tomorrow the rift would be passable only by fae magick for a whole year. The enormity of what she was about to do weighed heavily on her shoulders. Rules kept her safe. Rules were there for a reason, but this situation changed everything.
The time had come to break the rules.
§
Rook slipped around the trunk of the red Japanese maple on the edge of the artificially maintained glade, his fingers digging into the smooth bark. The Uplander sat, her hair a glossy fall of dark waves that swung about the base of her neck. She tilted her face up to the sun, like a tulip, and closed her eyes, absorbing the warmth. Just past her down the slight grassy knoll was a pond surrounded by bonsai trees, crossed at the center by a section of stone bridge.
Time was running short. The Shadow King had made it plain that this year the victor of Midsummer would lead them into battle. Kallus had made a bold move taking an Uplander back with him as a Midsummer’s conquest this early. But as a prince of the realm, Rook refused to be outdone by a mere captain of the royal guard. There was still nearly a full day until the Shadow King would call for an accounting of which of his warriors had brought back the best prize—and his father expected Rook to lead, as he was born to.
It was folly, certainly. Why waste his attentions on a simple Uplander who would never even know he existed? It would have been far more expedient, far easier to simply take her as a conquest and be done with it. But he didn’t want to merely capture her; he wanted to have her respond to him.
As soon as he’d gotten rid of the sycophantic Phareen, he’d returned to find Catherine. She was far superior to whomever Kallus had taken. The spicy scents of cinnamon and vanilla that cloaked her skin drifted to him, carried on the breeze. Awareness arced along his body, shooting sparks through his blood.