If one didn’t notice the literal cloud of glamour roiling off it, releasing smoky tendrils that writhed away into nothingness. Nightmare piskies buzzed over the roof and around the building, sounding like giant locusts, and more perched along fences and even atop cars. The very air surrounding the building was drenched in fear, anger, hate.
Puck coughed and made a gagging sound, waving a hand in front of his face as if he smelled something foul. “Oh, man, those are some strong nasty vibes. How can the humans even breathe around this?”
“This is the source of all the anger,” Nyx commented, gazing at the building with a grim look on her face. “I’ve rarely felt hate this strong. But, it feels strange. Almost...manufactured? Is that even possible?”
Puck snorted and rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Welcome to the internet,” he muttered. “Manufactured outrage is all the rage these days.”
“The question is, why?” Meghan added, frowning as she stared up at InSite. “Why create such hate and division? What are they trying to accomplish?”
“To fill the world with those delightful nightmare piskies?” Puck mused. “Oh, I know! Maybe some entrepreneur invented a new kind of faery repellant, but it needed a really annoying type of faery to really sell the idea and...yeah, you can all stop looking at me like that.”
A group of four humans walked past us on the sidewalk, and we all backed up a few paces to let them through. The group started out talking and laughing, but as they got closer, their demeanor changed. One of them said something jokingly to another, who immediately scowled and snapped an angry reply. Another human jumped in to defend him, and in a few seconds, the entire group was arguing with each other as they walked by, their mouths pulled into snarls and ugly sneers. As they passed us, the anger and contempt surrounding them hit me like a fist to the stomach. The humans continued past us, still arguing, and a swarm of nightmare piskies fluttered down and followed them down the street.
I set my jaw, feeling anger and a grim resolve settle over me. Glancing at Meghan, Nyx, and Puck, I saw that they felt the same. Whatever was happening with InSite, it had to end now. There was no way this much rage and hate were good for either world. “We’re not going to find any answers standing out here,” I said. “We need to get inside.”
“Okay, but how are we gonna do that?” Puck wondered. “We can’t just walk into a human office building and magically blow it up. One, that would be uncool. And, two, this is the real world. There are probably a bunch of ignorant but innocent corporate drones wandering around after hours.”
“How innocent are they, really?” I asked, causing Puck’s eyebrows to arch and Meghan to give me a sharp look. I didn’t care. I was tired of this, of monsters invading my world, putting my family at risk. Of humans and their volatile emotions, spawning anger and hate over nothing. That darkness in me boiled, tantalizing and powerful. If I walked through those doors and froze every living thing within the walls of InSite, human and faery alike, would the nightmare creatures disappear?
“Ash.” Meghan’s voice was quiet, not disapproving, but concerned. “We can’t harm any humans while we’re here,” she said. “Even if they have the Sight, or are working with these new type of fey. We can’t start killing mortals. Not when there are other ways to deal with them.”
I didn’t answer. Years ago, before I’d met Meghan, human lives meant very little to me. As the Unseelie prince, I had killed mortals with the same callousness that I’d shown the beasts I hunted. That all changed after I met the half-human daughter of Oberon, fallen in love, and gained a soul, but I still remembered how easy it was to kill a mortal. How I could snuff the life from them with a flick of my hand. In the years of ruling the Iron Realm with Meghan, that ruthlessness had faded, but, I was quickly discovering, it wasn’t completely gone.
Puck sighed. “Well, like ice-boy said, we’re not gonna learn anything standing out here,” he stated. Glancing at InSite’s glass doors, he gave an exaggerated shudder and rubbed his hands. “Let’s do this thing. The sooner we go in, the sooner we can see how badly we need to panic.”
* * *
Nothing stopped us as we walked up the front steps of InSite to the glass doors of the building. Nightmare piskies hissed and fled from us, their wings buzzing like giant wasps as they disappeared around the walls and over the roof. I did spot a security camera tucked away in a corner, watching the front entrance, but mortal technology couldn’t pick up the fey, even unglamoured; it certainly wouldn’t see us now.
The sliding glass doors were locked, as it was fully dark now, though lights still glowed from somewhere inside. The only evidence that this was, indeed, InSite’s headquarters were the letters on the doors indicating such.
“Locked, huh?” Puck muttered, observing the glass barrier critically. “Good thing it’s glass, then.” He glanced at Nyx, standing silently behind him. “Just out of curiosity, were you around before glass was invented? You know how to get through this, right?”
Nyx gave a tiny smile. “I know what glass is, Goodfellow. I am not that old. Incidentally, I know what salt is, too. Though it appears that putting a line of salt across the windowsill has fallen out of favor.”
“I know, right? Lucky for us.” Puck rubbed his hands together, and the air around him shimmered with magic. “Let’s see. Been a while since I’ve done this, but I think the human expression is: like riding a bike? Once you learn how, it never goes away—”
“Stop talking and just go, Puck,” I growled at him.
At our feet, Grimalkin sniffed. “I would save your breath, prince,” he sighed. “I have been saying the same thing for millennia, and he only seems to get worse.”
“Jeez, impatient much, you two?” Puck raised his arm and pressed a palm against the door. Glancing at Nyx, he grinned conspiratorially. “These are also the two that are constantly annoyed when I leap before I look. I don’t think they know what they want, really.”
“Puck...”
“Keep your frosty hat on, prince. I’m going.” He took a step, and for a moment the doors rippled slightly, like heat waves in the sun, as Puck passed through the glass and stepped into the building.
Nyx followed, though I noticed she briefly closed her eyes as she went through, an older technique where the belief was that if they didn’t see the barrier, it didn’t exist. I pulled my glamour to me and passed through with Meghan, my magic leaving patterns of frost against the glass for a few seconds after we were through. Grimalkin sauntered in behind us like the door wasn’t even there.
As soon as we were through the door, the building changed.
I jerked to a halt as we stepped through the glass and saw the rest of the group stop as well, gazing around in wary confusion. At first glance, the inside of the building was just as drab and unremarkable as the outside. The front lobby was brightly lit, and there was a human sitting at a welcome desk, though, of course, he didn’t see four faeries and a cat pass right through the front doors. It wasn’t the room itself that caused the shiver down my spine, but what lay beyond.