Infinity Key (Senyaza Series Book 2) Page 2

  “Well, you haven’t been home in two weeks and Rhianna hasn’t been home in months. So it has to be something else.” Brynn nodded at her own logic.

  “Why ghosts, though? You’d think they would have showed up before now. I mean, we've lived in this house a long time. I'm pretty sure Grandma would have discovered ghosts if we had them. She finds out everything.”

  Brynn gave her a patient look. “It’s mysterious noises in an attic, Branwyn. I used to tell Meredith pixies lived up there, but let’s be honest. The only thing in a Victorian attic is ghosts and madwomen. And there’s no madwomen.” She added conscientiously, “I checked.”

  As Branwyn put a foot on the staircase, she brightened. “Are you going to see? It’s the little room. Be careful of the rat traps.”

  “Good luck getting the tablet. Try bringing him a big glass of lemonade, then waiting until he goes to the bathroom,” Branwyn said in return, and went upstairs.

  She remembered the little room Brynn mentioned, although she hadn’t thought about it since she was around Brynn’s age. It was up on the third floor, beyond a small door in the old attic playroom, tucked under the eaves. These days, the playroom served as storage for elderly electronics equipment. The door was behind a box of speakers, so small that the box completely hid it. Branwyn shoved the box to another corner, avoiding the rat traps, then opened the door.

  Beyond was a small room thickly coated with dust. A tiny lamp was attached to one wall, linked to the same circuit as the main attic lights; a narrow window near the low ceiling let in a bar of sunlight. The remains of a doll’s adventures in toyland had been abandoned some time ago: tea accoutrements, ponies to ride, dragons to slay. Branwyn recognized a few of the toys as things she’d played with and more as gifts her baby sister had acquired at birthdays and holidays. The dust had been disturbed in a trail leading to another set of rat traps, each one baited and poised to snap.

  Branwyn looked at the rat traps in the outer room again. They’d all been set off and the bait stolen, she realized. A flicker of motion caught her eye, and she glanced sharply to the right.

  There was a snap from the little room. When Branwyn peeked through the door again, all four of the traps within had been set off. Had one of the dolls moved? She couldn’t tell. But she certainly didn’t see any ratty pawprints in the dust. She crawled into the room and promptly sneezed, then sneezed again.

  The dust settled, but it settled into a familiar shape: the outline of a child’s fairy doll, laid out on the floor like somebody had drawn it there.

  Branwyn's mouth curved in an slow, pleased smile. The faerie Duke she’d met had first manifested as a doll-like pixie. He’d not only been interested in humanity, he’d been interested in her. He'd even sent her a sweet letter after it was all over, written in dusk blue ink on handmade paper that smelled of the ocean, and delivered by magic. After reading it, she'd felt quite charitable toward him, even inclined to forgive the fact that he'd abducted her. He'd apologized for that, after all, and he'd been acting under—and fighting against—a magical coercion. But despite his assurance that she would have a chance to see him again if she wished, there was no followup.

  It was disappointing, because she'd been very much looking forward to letting him make it up to her. As week after week had slid by, the tendency toward forgiveness had faded. But not the curiosity.

  Maybe she’d been looking in the wrong places. Or perhaps he’d gotten her address wrong.

  That seemed more likely.

  She thought about the vague promises the faerie had given her of “making it up to her,” and she thought about Penny in the hospital bed, providing experimental data for Senyaza. Senyaza hadn't had to deal with faeries in a very long time, Marley had said. Maybe they knew something the wizard corporation didn't.

  She imagined a circle, a triangle, and a square merging, and as they slid together, the second sight she’d been reluctantly granted flickered to life. Lines of colored light sprang across the room, varying in thickness and intensity. According to Corbin, who had given her the ability in the first place, the lines were part of something called the Geometry and manipulating them was the primary focus of modern-day wizards. An expert could identify where various lines came from and what they meant. But they told her little. Cords of light traced the edges of the room and clustered thickly over the storage boxes. A loose knot formed over the main door she’d entered through, and another one tangled in the frame of the miniature door. If there was magic there, she couldn’t pick it out from the rest of the room, or any other room she’d looked at. It wasn’t enough.

  It was pretty, though. She reached out to run her fingers along the knot of the little door. The crimson and citrine glows brightened. Thoughtfully, she crawled back to the outer room and closed the door behind her. Then, without a hint of self-consciousness, she knocked.

  The lines of the Geometry rippled in response and the door cracked open.

  -two-

  The shadows of the boxes in the corner moved as Branwyn pushed the miniature door further open, as if a light she couldn’t see streamed from the opening. The tiny room beyond rippled, like it had been painted on a transparent curtain.

  “All right!” She exclaimed, recognizing the curtain-like ripple. She'd seen it before when passing into the faerie realm. Hopefully, she crawled through the door. As she did, she had the strong sensation of multiple veils parting around her head and shoulders. Each time the invisible wisps pulled away from her face, the light and color in the little attic space changed. Brown. Yellow. Gold. Red. Purple. And the room grew bigger and bigger; the slats beneath her hands and knees became softer, the air became rich and heavy with jasmine and patchouli.

  She rose to her feet in a large, high-ceilinged room draped with fabrics of purple and charcoal, with crimson cushions scattered over elaborately woven carpets. Flames danced in enclosed sconces along the walls, leaving the corners in shadows. Glowing pairs of eyes opened in the gloom, one pair after another, gleaming like a new-wakened predator's.

  Still pleased with herself, Branwyn said, “I didn’t even need a Drink Me.” She recognized the eyes from her previous visit, too, and disregarded them blithely.

  “You were invited,” said the figure lounging in the elaborate chair at the far end of the room. It appeared to be a man, long legs stretched before him in a pose of ready relaxation “Welcome back to Underlight, Branwyn.” His voice was deep and clear, with musical undertones. He stretched out a hand toward her, as if commanding her forward.

  Branwyn crossed her arms. “I was, but you weren’t. What are you doing here? My family thinks you're rats in in the attic. Why didn’t you just come visit me? Admit it, you got lost.”

  The outstretched hand turned over, the fingers curling into a fist. “Difficulties presented themselves. Fortunately, your great-grandmother came to our aid.”

  Branwyn narrowed her eyes. Her great-grandmother had been dead for five years. “Gran-gran never would have helped you. All of her faerie stories were about how to keep you away.”

  Amusement threaded through that rich voice. “Oh, please, Branwyn. She wished so very much for us to exist, her yearning is embedded in the very walls of the house you grew up in. In any case, all we needed was a connection point. That was easy enough to achieve.”

  “Why didn’t you just do it at my apartment, then?” She planted her feet wide apart in the deeply piled rugs. She'd come this far, but he wasn't luring her any closer without giving up something. She was interested in what he had to say, but he was the one who had some making up to do.

  “Suspicious Branwyn,” said the figure fondly. He dropped his hand and stood up, stepping down from the dais. “Did you only crawl through that door to berate me? And here I thought you yearned, just as your Gran-gran did.”

  Branwyn watched Tarn, the Duke of Underlight, pace down the length of the room toward her. He moved with the lazy predatory grace of a cat, his dark boots barely whispering across the carpet. Black
hair curled carelessly over his high forehead and tumbled over the collar of the long, sky-blue satin coat he wore. His smile, too, was that of a cat, one that had a mouse between its paws. She watched him, almost mesmerized for a moment. He was extremely attractive that way. Then she caught herself. “For you to exist? Never.”

  One of the pairs of eyes emerged from its shadowy corner. They belonged to another male figure, this one short and slender, with wild tufts of chestnut hair and a pointed face. Without saying a word, he fell into step behind Tarn, his gaze never leaving Branwyn. The Duke paid him no attention at all.

  “Shall I tell you a story? Once upon a time there was a girl named Branwyn. Branwyn was brave and strong and fierce, and she looked around the world with clear eyes and saw so much that needed to change, and she knew she could change it. One person could make a difference; this was her motto.”

  His voice entrancing, he went on. “Our Branwyn had many friends, but two who were particularly dear to her. She’d grown up with them and she thought they had no secrets from each other. Imagine her consternation when she discovered that the two of them had gotten into an adventure without her! And what an adventure it was: one of her friends found that she wasn’t quite human, while the other discovered her very humanity made her vulnerable. One ended up initiated into a secret world of magic and power, while the other was left with nothing more than a heartbeat. And there was Branwyn, left behind. There was Branwyn, outside. One person could make a difference, but that one person wasn’t Branwyn. Wouldn’t be Branwyn; she was too normal, too mundane. Too human. Poor Branwyn. Better she should sleepwalk through life than know how meaningless she was, don’t you think?”

  He paused, then said in a different, more conversational tone, “The young raven wizard of Senyaza offered to teach you mortal magic, but you refused him. Is not something better than nothing?”

  Branwyn shook the last traces of his hypnotic storytelling out of her ears. “He only did it for Marley. We stopped the lessons because I’d never be more than a dabbler. I don’t have the aptitude for more, he said. And that it would take more than a human lifetime for him to teach me anything real, and of course I don't have that.” She wondered now if the circumstances of Corbin’s declaration should be taken into account—she had just wrecked a day’s boring preparations by eating an apple that had happened to be a magic component—then shrugged. It didn’t matter if he was angry when he said it, because he was right. “How do you know these things?”

  “I’m a lord of Faerie. I've had a very long time to learn to read the stories under what I see.” He gave her an assessing look. She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth, but before she could actually say anything, he went on. “You’ve been granted the Sight and your nodes have been filled with nonsense charms.” His hand moved gracefully, tracing out the seven spheres of complex light that she knew she’d see on her reflection if she glanced into a mirror with the Geometry vision activated. They were charms, prepared magical effects like the Sight that could be stored in the nodes the Geometry formed only in living things. If the nodes weren't filled with charms crafted by a wizard, they could be filled with other, darker things by the malicious and powerful. “You’ve spent time with him, but you are protected as one protects a bystander, not an apprentice. And yet you have the Sight, which would only frighten a bystander. Besides, I saw the way he looked at Marley, and Marley looked at you, when all three of you were my guests.”

  “They’re not quite nonsense,” she protested. “Some of them are damned handy.”

  “Yes,” said Tarn sympathetically. “I can see that. You can count a thousand grains of sand correctly and call for help. Practical and significant. And yet, you want more. Because here you are.”

  Branwyn shrugged. “Yes, I do. But what can you do about it? You can’t even come visit me in the real world.” Then, still irritated, she added, “Would it help if I clapped my hands and believed?”

  Tarn smiled. “There’s plenty of that already. The world is… amazing these days. It seems that half of all the world dreams of our return.”

  “But here you are. Trapped. Why is that again?” She put her fists on her hips.

  The smaller faerie, still loitering behind his lord, snarled silently at her. Branwyn made a face in return.

  “Make no mistake, Branwyn. The door has cracked open and my cousins slip through. That I did not come to you is entirely a different matter, and not particularly relevant now that you have found your way here.”

  “Tell me anyhow,” Branwyn suggested. “I like to know things. Especially when people break appointments with me.”

  Tarn gazed at her, silent and expressionless for so long that Branwyn wondered if she'd made him angry. She remembered that it was hard to leave a faerie lord’s domain without his permission. Last time she’d been here, she’d been locked into a workshop and it flitted across her mind that she should maybe tone down the taunting.

  Then she thought, To hell with that!. He already had most of the power; she had to take what she could get or be run over by the raw force of his presence. Besides, the way he wanted so badly to make her like him made it almost irresistible to tease him.

  He said, finally, “The realm of Underlight is bound to two sovereign Courts and the two power sources they represent. And we are still prisoners, even if one of the chains has been broken. As long as even one chain exists, we are limited to when and where our Courts are the most powerful. The particular land you dwell in welcomes us, but we need more than the welcome of the faulted coast. We need the moon’s favor as well. When it is neither new nor full, those of Underlight cannot exit Faerie.”

  Skeptically, Branwyn asked, “You couldn’t even send a note?”

  “I did. It obviously didn’t arrive. Faerie is full of threats. Need I detail all of them? It will take a very long time.” She got the impression he wasn’t pleased with this line of questioning.

  Despite the temptation, she resisted poking more. Instead, thinking of Penny, she asked, “What can you do, when you're out in the world?”

  “Go for walks in the sand. Taste marvelous concoctions—humans are so inventive when it comes to food and drink, did you know that? Go to the galleries...” He sounded almost wistful.

  Branwyn's gaze sharpened. “I meant magically. Marley said you have strange magic.”

  “Ah,” he said, thoughtfully. “As to that—many things. Was there something in particular you were curious about?”

  Branwyn hesitated, then shrugged. He wanted something from her—she didn't for a minute believe he had invited her here just to chat—and she wanted to find out what that was before bringing up Penny. She didn't want to appear desperate, even if sometimes she felt that way. It was a matter of principle. Desperation did not produce fair deals. “I was just curious. All right. It seems like you have a great, if creepy, grasp of what I want. What do you want?”

  “Nothing so very awful. You’re an artist. I like art, and I’ve been collecting prizes for a very long time. I’d like you to make art for me.” He raised an elegant eyebrow at her.

  “I work by commission. That means ‘not for free’,” she added, just to make things clear. With human clients, you had to be perfectly explicit; from what Branwyn had learned from dealing with Tarn before, it was even more important with faeries.

  “We can discuss that. Our mortal income stream will take a while to establish—at least the variety you would find reliable—but I can offer other things…”

  Branwyn frowned at the implications, but only said, “And I work with metal. Are you sure?”

  Tarn’s eyes brightened. “I know. It’s one of the things that recommended you to me.”

  “But aren’t faeries allergic to iron and silver and so on?” She was sure she’d heard that mentioned in her Gran-gran’s stories. It was usually filed under “how to get rid of them.”

  “Only in Europe, and even then, not for a long time now,” he assured her. “It only happened for long, c
omplicated, and rather sordid reasons. Don’t worry yourself about it.” He closed his fist, then opened it again. Sitting in the palm of his hand was a polished silver key, small enough to fit on a modern keyring but with the look of an old-fashioned skeleton key.

  “I wasn’t worried, but fine,” she said. She didn’t snap, she was sure, despite provocation. “So you want metal artwork and you’re going to pay me in some way that doesn’t involve cash. Do go on.”

  “While you’re a talented artist, your work hasn’t acquired the popular success it deserves. You have to work a ‘day job,’ I think the term is. We could help with that popularity problem.”

  A laugh burst out of Branwyn involuntarily as the tension rushed out of her. She'd expected something less clichéd than that. “Seriously? My stepfather got an offer like that from a big record label once. He knew enough to stay away, and they were just humans. I think I’ll follow his example.” She looked around for an obvious way out. The only visible door was behind the throne Tarn had occupied when she arrived.

  “Such an independent spirit,” Tarn murmured. “Do you know why we of the fae so value artists and musicians?”

  “Because you can’t make anything yourselves? That’s what my great-grandmother said. Hey, where’s the exit?” She moved a few steps to the side, as if a new perspective would make a difference.

  He padded after her. “There is another reason. Take this,” he said, offering the key he still held. It glinted in the lamplight. “A courtkey to Underlight. It will let you enter—and exit—my realm as you please. A token of my respect.”

  Branwyn reached for the key warily, wondering just how solid his “respect” would turn out to be. “Really?” Her fingers closed over something heavy and real.

  “Truly.” He smiled at her. “The door is behind you.”

  Branwyn spun around and there it was: a simple mahogany door, looking like it had been there all along. She knew better.