Knox stepped past Merc, his brow furrowed with concern. “Want to tell us why you’re standing out here in the middle of the night, alone, talking to the voices?”
“I woke up here,” I said, biting my lip. My answer garnered the response I expected. My mates’ eyes went wide. Grizz snorted. And a slew of creative swears escaped the rest. “It’s not my fault!”
“We are aware of that,” Merc said dryly, eyeing the surrounding forest as though the fey might attack at any moment. “And that is the most disconcerting part of all this.”
Knowing an explanation was in order, I recounted the events that had occurred after I’d woken up standing on the bridge. The squad of disbelieving faces stared back in silence.
“And then Merc’s angry call scared the fog-face guy away.”
Nobody spoke for a painfully long time. Then Dean opened his mouth. “So…where did this pretty fog boy want you to follow him to?”
“Faerie, but…it was like he knew a way that wouldn’t sound the alarm when I arrived.”
“Well, you’re sure as fuck not going to do what this thing wants. This reeks of fey bullshit.”
“I am inclined to agree,” Merc added.
“So, something in the gorge is calling you…again?” Dean asked for clarification.
“Looks that way.”
“I find it interesting that those of you with ties to Faerie could hear the earlier voices,” Merc said, “but only Piper was drawn out here to experience this face in the fog.” I hadn’t considered that, having been too caught up in everything to put that piece together. But what it meant, I didn’t know.
I leaned forward over the railing to peer down into the pitch-black cavern below. The fog was all but gone and I could hear the water running, but it was far too dark to see anything but the deep chasm of nothing. Merc’s hand clamped down on my shoulder and gently pulled me back. When I looked back at him, the fear in his eyes was plain.
“I’m not going to do anything crazy,” I assured him, but he looked far from confident.
“Am I missing something?” Knox asked.
I let out a long exhale. “I may or may not have almost jumped to my death here once before,” I explained. His eyes went wide. “I think my behavior is making Merc edgy.”
Before the vampire king could answer for himself, the original whispers I’d heard the first time—the chorus of muddled voices—floated up through the gorge to us. Knox and I both looked to Merc for any sign of recognition. But his expression remained unchanged.
“He can’t hear them,” I said softly.
Merc’s brow furrowed. “The voices?” I nodded. “What are they saying?”
“They’re calling Piper,” Knox said.
“And they’re stronger now—and more desperate,” Foust added. “They’re begging her to come. Pleading for her help.”
“The queen wouldn’t use that ploy to draw me in when she doesn’t have anyone there to leverage me with,” I said, thinking things through, “and this happened before Liam even left, so—”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Knox replied with a note of frustration.
I pulled free from Merc and leaned forward again to better hear. There was something so familiar if I strained hard enough—if I focused on one voice instead of all of them.
“Help me see them,” I whispered to the night sky. Wind rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees but nothing materialized, though the voices grew clearer. “I know it’s Faerie,” I mused, “but it feels so different than it did at Mack’s club, or anything I experienced when I was actually in that realm. I don’t get it. I wish I could get closer somehow…wish I could see the source.”
“And what do you suggest, Piper?” Merc asked, “You launch yourself into the darkness and pray this isn’t one of the fey royals’ traps?”
I mean…
“Could you maybe ghost me down there? Get me a better look?”
“Absolutely not—”
“You could bring Knox, too—”
“I’m game—”
“We have no idea what’s awaiting you there, and three of us, however powerful, are not an army, Piper. We could be ghosting to our ends.”
“Fine,” I muttered. I closed my eyes and took a breath. There had to be a way to use my powers to illuminate what waited at the bottom of the gorge—what was really down there calling to me. “Show me how to get to them…”
The clouds above parted and the moon shone bright, cutting through the abyss of black below like the beam of a flashlight. The three of us (and then everyone else) leaned forward as the light illuminated the rocky walls and rushing river below. I was about to let my frustration at my magic’s noncompliance leak through when the water itself began to swirl in a whirlpool of shimmering silver and gold—clearly not an earthly phenomenon. This was pure magic.
Faerie’s magic.
The higher the water swirled, the louder the voices became, like shouts from across a field. They were clear and concise and almost recognizable. One in particular cut through the din like an arrow, the female voice so close it was as if she were standing beside me.
And that was when I realized who it was.
“You have to come, Piper,” Beatrice said, her voice frantic but strong. A voice that shouldn’t have been at all because, last time I checked, dead witches couldn’t talk. “You have to come now.”
“But where? Where do I go?” I shouted into the approaching funnel of water. It stretched well over a hundred feet in the air and was still reaching toward us.
“We’re running out of time!” she shouted before the cyclone started to descend.
“It’s Beatrice!” I said, panic in my voice. “We have to help her!” I shot a panicked look at Merc and Knox, beseeching them for a plan of any kind. Because if Bea was alive, then maybe not all of the witches had fallen to the fey king—and maybe all of our fears about Faerie were bullshit.
After all, the fey were notorious for manipulation and misdirection.
“What do we do?” I asked, my voice full of the fear I felt. At this point, the bridge was flooded by the pack, Kat, Grizz, and some enforcers, including Jase and Dean. “Keep the connection!” I yelled at the gorge, but the funnel continued to shrink by the second, as though I had no control over it at all—most likely because I didn’t—it wasn’t mine to command. Whatever power it held was fading on Bea’s end, and I was terrified that, if we didn’t act right away, we would lose it forever.
“Piper, please!” she shouted again.
“Beatrice!” I yelled back, her frantic tone driving me to act before thinking.
I climbed up onto the railing, much to the chagrin of Merc and Knox and basically everyone else around me. They reached to yank me down, but I stopped them with a single word.
“No!”
It echoed around us. The cyclone hesitated.
“I can’t abandon her again,” I said, searching their eyes for understanding. I found none; only angry males and a pissed-off Kat, held back by a gust of my magical wind. “I can do this…trust me.”