Sandy Williams - The Sharpest Blade

Kyol doesn’t say anything when he sees her, but an echo of the shock he felt when Lena mentioned a tor’um fissured me to the Realm leaks through our life-bond.

He looks at me.

“I know,” I tell him, because what else can I say? I was completely out of my mind when I came here.

His emotions soften for an instant, but his hard, neutral expression doesn’t change.

“They’ll fissure you both back to Earth,” he says, indicating Trev and the other fae with Kynlee. “If you happen to need me . . .”

He’ll feel it if I do.

“I’ll be fine,” I say out loud.

He nods. When Kynlee and her escorts reach us, he says, “Good-bye, McKenzie.”

I watch him walk away. One step. Two steps. Three. It feels like a gulf opens between us.

“Hey, Kyol,” I call out.

He turns. The Realm’s cold night air ruffles through his dark hair and wraps his cloak around his body.

“I’m really glad you’re okay.”

A month ago, fissuring between the Realm and the Earth twice within an hour would leave me disoriented for a few minutes. This time, I’m not even slightly dizzy. That’s definitely a good thing, but it makes me uncomfortable, too. I’m not the same person I was a month ago.

The other thing that’s making me uncomfortable?

Kynlee.

I watch the tor’um as she sinks into the passenger seat. Trev and the other fae brought us back to the Vegas gate so I could get my car, and even though she looks semi-innocent sitting there silent with her arms crossed, she can’t be.

After starting the engine, I ask, “What is it you want?”

She toys with a tear in the fabric of her seat, not looking at me. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you fissure me to the Realm?”

“You asked me to,” she says, like I was asking her to pass the salt at dinner.

“No, I asked you to call someone who could do it.” My memory is murky, but I’m pretty sure that’s true. “You volunteered too easily. You didn’t even know what a gate looked like. Have you ever fissured before?”

“Yes,” she says, looking up long enough to throw a glare my way.

I make a U-turn, then glance at her, my eyebrows raised.

“Once,” she adds.

I stare a little longer.

“Three years ago,” she mutters. “Across my living room.”

I should so be dead right now.

“Traveling through the In-Between is dangerous,” I tell her. “There has to be a reason you risked it with me. So, what is it you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” she says, sinking back into her seat.

“Kynlee.”

“I don’t,” she says. “Look, I was just curious. My dad hardly ever talks about the Realm. I wanted to know what it was like. I’ve asked him to take me there; he won’t.”

“That’s it? Seriously?”

“That’s it,” she says.

Great. I’ve aided and abetted a teenage rebellion.

“Your dad lives in Vegas with you?” I ask.

“Yeah.” She stares out the passenger window.

I turn off the highway. “The city doesn’t bother you?”

“The city?”

“The tech,” I say. “The city’s tech doesn’t bother you?”

“Oh.” She rolls her eyes. “That’s why we live here. All the tech on the Strip makes the chance of a fae coming here and finding us practically zero. I get headaches sometimes, but I just pop a Tylenol.”

I guess she doesn’t have to worry about the tech damaging her magic. It’s already wrecked.

Kynlee gives me directions to her neighborhood. It’s close to the library, and it backs up to a newly renovated shopping center with a Walmart, a big electronics store, and several clothing chains. By the time I pull up to Kynlee’s house, it’s well after dark. Even though it’s still hot as hell outside, I pull on the light sweater I keep in my car in case the library is cold. My pants are crunchy from the dried blood, but they’re black, and it’s dark. Someone would have to take a really close look to notice the stains.

“You can go,” Kynlee says, when I get out of the car. “I’m fine.”

I follow her to the porch anyway.

“Seriously, I’m fine,” she tells me. “Thanks for bringing me home. See you later.”

“I want to talk to your dad,” I say, when she opens the door.

“That’s okay. Thanks. Bye.” Kynlee steps inside. I’m pretty sure she intends to shut the door in my face, but before she does, a man—a human man—steps into the entryway.

“You’re late,” he says, glaring at Kynlee. All I can do is stare. I’d assumed her dad was fae. More precisely, I’d assumed he was tor’um . I used to think fae didn’t live in my world—they just visited it and left after they got what they needed—but two months ago I met a group of tor’um who lived outside Vancouver. They were living fairly normal, human lives there. In the Realm, tor’um are looked down on and are all but shunned. At least they were when King Atroth was in charge. Lena accepts them, though. She and her brother were friends with the tor’um in Vancouver. In fact, Sethan died trying to protect them from Atroth’s fae.

Of course, the reason Atroth’s fae were there to begin with was because the tor’um were sheltering rebels.

I shake my head, dislodging thoughts of the Vancouver tor’um from my mind. This man can’t be Kynlee’s real dad—human and fae can’t have kids—so he has to have adopted her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to get another ride home.”

“Who are you?” the man asks me.

“My name’s McKenzie,” I say. “I met Kynlee—”

“She works at the library,” Kynlee says quickly. “I had to wait for her shift to end.” She looks at me with wide, pleading eyes.

“Um.” He’s human, but he knows about the Realm. That means he has to have the Sight. He has to know what his daughter is. And if he’s her legal guardian, he has a right to know where she was, doesn’t he?

Her father stiffens. He looks at his daughter, then at me, then back at her again.

“Kynlee.” His voice is low. “Where are your gloves?”

She’s not wearing either of them. Her arms are bare, and the lightning striking across her skin is pale and erratic. Is it more frequent than usual?

It must be. He grabs her wrist as if that will help him inspect her edarratae more closely. “What have you been doing?”

Kynlee sighs in defeat. “I was just helping her, Dad.”

“Helping her with what?” He eyes me.

Ah, hell. This is going to go so badly.

I clear my throat. “She fissured me to the Realm. I shouldn’t have let her. I wasn’t in my right mind, and I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t immediately slam the door in my face. He peers up and down the street, searching for fae, I presume, then he shoves Kynlee inside, and says, “Stay the fuck away from my daughter.”

If I had been standing one inch closer, the slamming door would have bloodied my nose.

IT’S JUST AFTER 10:00 P.M. when I pull into my apartment complex and turn off the engine. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I climb the steps to my second-story apartment and unlock the door. My place is tiny—a six-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in a bad part of town—but it was renovated just before I rented it, and I can actually afford the rent without help from the fae. It’s mine—so is the used car I parked outside—and there’s something satisfying in knowing that I can make it on my own.

“Sosch,” I call after closing and locking the front door. The kimki has been living with me these last three weeks. I’m not sure if that’s by choice. He showed up in the hotel suite I was staying in a few days before I moved out, and since a fae hasn’t been in my new apartment, Sosch has been stuck with me. The only way he can get back to the Realm is by piggybacking through a fae’s fissure.