Dated June 1983 was an entry about a fae who’d been cornered outside an establishment on Decater oddly named… Vanilla. My brows rose at that, but I kept reading and found what I was looking for.
Two male fae were viewed leaving Vanilla and captured a block west. Both appeared to be Changed.
Changed? What the…? I reread that line to make sure I’d read that correctly, and I had.
Their eyes were pitch black, opaque in nature, like the fae that had wounded Torres, confirming Torres’ account of the previous attack. Once held in captivity, they experienced rapid degeneration, the likes of which we have not witnessed. Within four hours, there was nothing left of them but dust. Harris believes it was due to their inability to feed, however our previous research suggests that fae can continue living without feeding…
Harris was one of the docs who worked for the Order. Unfortunately he’d died since, so I couldn’t call him and ask why in the world a fae would die in that short of a timespan. Or a better question would be what did they mean by infected? I kept reading, turning pages until I reached another entry dated a month later regarding the ‘Changed fae’.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, nearly dropping the book when I saw her name.
Based on the samples Merle brought back to headquarters, our suspicions concerning the Changed fae were correct. The drink the fae favored had been altered. Trace amounts of an unknown powdery substance similar to Devil’s Breath was found in the nightshade. We believe that this substance, which has originated from the Otherworld, is responsible for the Changed fae’s increased violent aggression and rapid degeneration. The effects of this substance may be similar to that of Devil’s Breath.
Seeing my mom’s name caused my chest to compress. It took several moments before I could continue, but when I did I discovered something quite disturbing.
Several pages had been torn out of the journal in many different places, and there was no other mention of Changed fae or Devil’s Breath.
Closing the book, I sat there for a moment. Was that place still there? Vanilla? I didn’t think so since I’d never heard of it. Rising from the chair, I hurried over to where the desktop computer sat. It took a Godawful amount of time for me to get to Google since there were about a million update alerts. After an eternity of false leads, I found the location of where I thought Vanilla used to be. Near the Candymaker store, there was now a bar called Thieves. I hadn’t heard of the place, but that didn’t mean much, because there were a metric crap ton of bars and clubs in and around the Quarter.
Pushing back from the desk, I went to the coffee table, where the stack of maps Mom had of all the secret fae hidey holes were. I spread the maps out, dragging my finger along the old parchment until I found where I was pretty confident Decatur was….
And yep, there was a mark above the location where Thieves was.
“Hell.” I straightened, popping my hands on my hips. I probably would’ve eventually checked out the place, but I hadn’t made it that far on Mom’s maps.
Wondering what the hell Devil’s Breath was, I went back to the computer and typed it in… aaand immediately wished I hadn’t.
Devil’s Breath was a very real thing, one of the most powerful drugs in the world derived from a borrachero tree. It was called scopolamine, South America’s zombie drug. When used illegally, it could strip a person’s free will, erase their memories, paralyze, and even kill them. Apparently, some doctors prescribed some form of it, for what, I didn’t even want to know. But if there was an Otherworld plant similar to this, God only knew what it meant if it could strip the will of a fae—
Well, we already knew what that meant, didn’t we? Caden was proof of what could happen when a fae—a very powerful fae—had their free will stripped.
Unsettled by the implications, I started Googling the bar known as Thieves and then moved onto public records such as tax and owner information. Hitting the motherload of information, the unease grew when I saw one of the names.
Marlon St. Cyers.
He was one of the Ancients who’d sided with the Queen and had been a powerful real estate developer. He was deader than dead now, but there was another name listed as the owner.
Rica Car I
That was a strange name. Like so strange the longer I stared at the name on the screen the more I began to think it wasn’t an actually name at all but an anagram. An anagram for what?
Grabbing a pen and a notepad, I got down to writing out different variations and it didn’t take long for me to come up with a name—a name that was the same for both words.
Aric.
Chapter 21
If Miles was to ever discover what I was about to do, the least of the things that would happen would be me being removed from the Order. The worst? They would treat me as if I’d committed treason, and there’d be no lawyers or a court to hand down punishment. The Order acted as judge and jury, and the penalty for betraying the Order was death.
And I was definitely walking a fine line when it came to acts of treason as I crossed the lobby of the building Caden lived in and hit the button for his floor Saturday afternoon.
I could’ve gone to Miles with the information I’d discovered, but I wasn’t sure he would do anything since it involved missing younglings. If there was something crazy going on with the fae, with them Changing, it wouldn’t be a problem the Order needed to deal with.
Yet.
But it could be a huge problem. Because if there was something out there that could strip a fae of their free will, and if that was what had happened to Elliot and the other missing younglings, that meant it could happen to any of the Summer fae. Hell, all of them.
And that would be bad. Very bad.
So I was going to Caden, because this concerned him and his court now.
As I rode the elevator up, I had no idea if Caden was home or not, but I had no way of getting in contact with him. If he wasn’t home then I could either camp out here or go to Tanner or Faye to see if they had a way to contact him.
I wasn’t acknowledging that I could’ve had Tink contact Fabian to get that information. I wasn’t acknowledging that, because if I did, then I’d also have to acknowledge that I’d chosen to come to Caden’s place, because… because I wanted to see him. And acknowledging that meant also acknowledging that I had taken the time to get changed before I came here. I also brushed my hair and left it down, which was more than I did on most Saturday afternoons, and I was wearing a sweater dress with sensible boots. Obviously, the stretchy royal blue dress was not nearly the sexiest thing I owned, but I always felt good in it.
And I also, also wasn’t acknowledging why I needed to feel good going to Caden’s place.
Heart thumping like I’d run up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, I walked down the hall toward his place, my hand twitching around the strap of my purse. Hand trembling a little, I knocked on his door and then took a step back.
He shared that with you. That means something.
I shoved Tink’s words out of my head, and God, this was stupid. I should’ve just tried to get the number from Fabian. There was no reason for me to come here, especially after what had happened last night. He’d fed and I’d had a full body orgasm, which was freaking lovely, but things would be awkward now. And that was something I should’ve thought of before I came—