Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

I wondered how many other lawyers called Forest’s Edge home.

We rolled down all the windows in the SUV. Community signs announcing “Children Playing” and “Slow Please,” right at the gate, were a perfect excuse to trundle along toward our destination. Wyatt slid closer to his door and leaned his face out the window.

I didn’t know what I could say to encourage him, so I kept my mouth shut.

As we drew closer to the sign for Applewood Lane, Wyatt closed his eyes, eyebrows furrowed, nostrils flaring. All I smelled was fast-food grease, so I hoped he was having better luck. Phin and Marcus were both intently sniffing the air out their respective windows in a way that was almost comical.

Soon after Kismet turned onto Applewood Lane, Edwina Fair’s home appeared, a third-floor condo in a building of six. Kismet parked across the street. Some nearby residences had cars parked, but many residents didn’t appear to be home. Good for us. The middle of the afternoon on a hot summer Saturday wasn’t prime time for folks to be hanging around the house.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Not the Lupa,” Wyatt replied. When he looked at me, more silver had crept into the black of his eyes. “But I sense magic. There’s a Break around here, a Sanctuary.”

Terrific . Was I that exhausted from my early-morning teleportation session that I’d fried my Break sensor? I barely felt the level of magic I was used to and hadn’t really missed it until Wyatt mentioned the increase. Would I even be able to teleport if I needed to?

“Well, now what?” Kismet asked. “Are you going to ring her bell and ask if she’s harboring fugitive werewolves?”

“Might as well,” I said.

“Evy—”

“If Amalie is in her avatar, then she knows we’re here. Before she died, Jaron told us that Amalie can sense anyone who’s been in her true presence, which Wyatt and I both have.”

“Sense how?”

“I’m not completely sure. At the very least, she knows we’re both alive. At the most, she knows we’re practically on her doorstep right now.”

“If she’s still using her avatar,” Marcus said. “Edwina Fair has not been to work in several days. Her employer stated she requested a brief leave of absence.”

“How brief?” I asked.

“Through the weekend. Apparently, she’s due back on Monday.”

I glanced at Wyatt. “Ready to knock on an old friend’s door?”

“As I’ll ever be,” he replied.

We climbed out our respective sides, and I met him by his door. A yellow sports car drove past, its music blasting bass even though the windows were all up, keeping in the air-conditioning and the worst of the noise. Walking across the street toward 345 Applewood Lane, with Wyatt by my side, felt right for so many reasons—solving a mystery, impending danger, a possible fight. I had a knife by my ankle, a gun at my waist hiding under my T-shirt, and a blast of adrenaline setting my heart pounding.

It was an old, familiar buzz, and I’d kind of missed it.

We took the stairs quickly to the third floor. The curtains were drawn in all the windows, and a brightly colored floral doormat decorated the stoop. The door had a silver knocker and a bell.

“Anything?” I asked.

Wyatt closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, held it. On the exhale, he looked at me. “I smell death.”

Terrific .

“Do you sense the Lupa at all?”

“No. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel, but I don’t feel any different.”

Awesome.

I rang the bell. Twice.

“Maybe she’s out getting her nails done,” I muttered, then banged on the door with a closed fist. “Ms. Fair, are you home?”

Wyatt grabbed the knob. It turned, and the door creaked open. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

“This isn’t good.”

My nose verified my trepidation as I stepped inside. Humid, hot air carried the odors of human waste and decay. The air-conditioning was off, the windows were sealed, and the room was stifling hot even with the shade. Something had died in here.

The condo was tasteful and expensive, with chrome lighting fixtures and a black-and-white color scheme, and very little in the way of personality. It was an odd contrast to the colorful doormat. And despite the stink, it was clean and extremely tidy.

We found the source of the smell in the master bedroom. Edwina Fair lay on her bed surrounded by deep purple pillows and an empty pill bottle. She’d been there a couple of days and her face was badly swollen, but I couldn’t mistake that hair—bright red ringlets, long and thick.

The irrational side of my brain expected the dead woman’s sunken eyes to snap open, blazing with blue energy, and for Amalie’s voice to lay some vague threat on us like a creature from a horror movie. But I knew that wouldn’t happen. Sprites could inhabit only living bodies.

Then again, almost everything I’d once believed about the Fey turned out to be wrong, or badly skewed.

“So either Edwina Fair was a very, very disturbed and lonely woman,” I said, “or Amalie helped her avatar commit suicide.”

“Could be both,” Wyatt said as he inspected the woman’s dresser. “Losing hours of your day, not knowing why, probably took its toll. Do you remember Jed Peters?”

It took a moment for the name to click. “Jaron’s avatar?”

“When the Triads cleaned out his apartment after his death, they found migraine medication and prescription painkillers and a lot of unpaid bills. Apparently he suffered crippling headaches and blackouts, which made it hard to keep a job. Doctors were unable to diagnose his illness, so they just kept him doped up.”

“Jaron did that to him?”

“I think so.”

The truth of it disgusted me. The sprites had been recklessly using those humans to communicate with us, with no regard for their health or mental state. Being a sprite avatar had been slowly killing Jed Peters long before his death at Token’s hands. Just as it had likely been killing Edwina Fair long before she swallowed that bottle of pills.

“Un-fucking-believable.”

“This scares me, Evy.”

I turned to face him, surprised and concerned by the admission. “That Amalie’s avatar is dead?”

“Yes. My money is on Deaem’s avatar being dead, too. The brass collectively killed themselves last month. The Fey are pulling out of the city.”

“It does seem like it.” Deaem had been Jaron’s replacement as Amalie’s second when the latter died almost two months ago. Like Wyatt, I wouldn’t be shocked if a look at recent suicides listed an Asian man of about thirty years old.

The implications of the Fey cutting their ties to the city were staggeringly bad. They lived and breathed the magic of the Break, and they protected a doorway to the place where that magic originated. A place where demons existed.

“Do you think they’d leave First Break?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess it depends on what happens next. I feel like we’re trying to cross a frozen river that’s cracking to pieces under our feet, and Amalie’s standing over us with a rock, waiting for the right time to drop it and shatter the ice.”

“Chaos.”

“And a lot of death.”

The enormity of the situation threatened to smash me into the ground. It was too damned much, and I hated it. But hiding wasn’t an option, and it never would be. Looking at the big picture made our task seem impossible. I had to keep us focused on things we could affect. Things that were not beyond our ability to control—like two Coni who needed us.

“I’m scared, too, Wyatt,” I said. “Terrified, in fact. But I can’t think about whether or not Amalie’s dropping that rock. Right now, only two deaths matter to me. The deaths of Ava and Aurora, and those are deaths I can’t let happen. I need to save them. The rest has to come after.”