The Changeling Chronicles Books 1-3

FAERIE BLOOD

FAERIE BLOOD

I’m Ivy Lane, and if I never see another faerie again, it’ll be too soon.

Twenty years after the faeries came and destroyed the world as we knew it, I use my specialist skills to keep rogue faeries in line and ensure humans and their magically gifted neighbours can coexist (relatively) peacefully.

Nobody knows those skills came from the darkest corner of Faerie itself.

When a human child disappears, replaced with a faerie changeling, I have to choose between taking the safe road or exposing my own history with the faeries to the seductively dangerous head of the Mage Lords. He’s the exact kind of distraction I don’t need, but it’s work with him or lose my chance to save the victims.

It’ll take all my skills to catch the kidnappers and stop Faerie’s dark denizens overrunning the city — but if the faerie lords find out about the magic I stole last time I went into their realm, running won’t save me this time…

1

When I was sixteen years old, I walked out of hell, thinking I’d finally be free of the faeries.

Ten years later, the joke was on me. Instead of spending my Saturday afternoon lazing around at home, there I was, deep in a troll’s lair with a piskie hovering over my shoulder.

He took my friend’s charm, whined the piskie.

Yes, you said. I continued sorting through the array of junk the troll had gathered, searching for the tell-tale glint of a spell. Charms were notoriously tricky to get right, but given the wad of cash on offer, I’d get a nice bonus if I returned this one to its rightful owner.

In the suburbs, you took whatever work you could get, even skulking around a troll’s nest. I’d had to wait until the beast went off hunting before I risked sneaking in. As far as enjoyment went, I’d rank the experience somewhere up there with putting a harness on a kelpie. Though at least kelpies didn’t smell like a blocked drain. Grimacing, I shoved a heap of human clothes aside that I hoped had been acquired via theft and not as a bonus from its latest meal. Trying to make faeries obey human laws was tricky at the best of times, but I drew the line at sifting through troll dung to figure out if it had recently consumed a human being or not. Luckily, that job fell to the clean-up squad, who sat one rank below me on the less-than-impressive ladder of poor souls freelancing for Larsen Crawley.

The word freelancer sounded like it ought to mean something like dragon slayer. In my case, that was almost literally true, but there was zero glamour in kneeling in unappealing wetness to sift through contraband. Trolls had magpie-like tendencies for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and I found several charms nestled beneath a pile of old computer parts.

Gotcha. I identified the small, glinting cylindrical charm from among the others. What kind of spell is this?

Beautification, said the piskie.

Figures. I slid the charm into my pocket and headed towards the exit.

A shuffling noise came from ahead and drew me to a halt as the troll’s hulking frame filled the entryway. Oh, shit. I’d planned to confront the creature later, sure, but not here in its cramped nest. Trolls were notoriously territorial. Great job there, Ivy.

I reached for the sword I kept sheathed at my waist, waving farewell to my resolution to get through this without unnecessary bloodshed. The troll bellowed, swinging a giant fist at me. I ducked, inwardly cursing the cave’s tight walls, and drew the blade from its sheath. Towering over me despite the low ceiling, the troll’s body resembled a misshapen boulder and was resilient to virtually anything.

Except—like all faeries, with no exception—iron.

I repositioned myself, raising my sword, hoping it’d have the good sense to move before I had to use it. Unfortunately, expecting good sense from a troll was like expecting manners from a brain-eating boggart, and the blade glanced off the troll’s arm. I hadn’t put all my weight behind it, but the bright spray of blood made the troll scream in alarm and stomp its huge feet hard enough to shake the whole lair. A second swing of its fist sent me reeling sideways, my feet skidding right into a pile of… ugh. Troll dung.

Take a hint, I snarled, swinging the blade again. Already the iron had left a spiderweb of cracks along the troll’s massive arm, and its feet stumbled, driving me further back into the dung heap. I’m sparing your life, boulder-brain.

Boulder-brain aimed another punch at my head. I ducked, and the troll’s fist went straight through the wall of its own lair. The troll roared and tried to pull its hand free, sending bits of crumbling rock over my head, but its fist was well and truly stuck.

As its other hand swiped at me, I dropped to the ground, crawled between its legs and pointed my blade at its spine. The troll flailed its free arm, howling in frustration. I’d have laughed at its predicament if I wasn’t doing my absolute best to forget what I’d just crawled through. Naturally, the piskie had disappeared into thin air at the troll’s appearance, and not a soul remained in the nest except for the pair of us. Oh, and my sword, of course. Irene had been my faithful companion through ten years of fighting the evil forces of Faerie and laying down the law. The iron gleamed even through the vibrant bluish-red sheen of the troll’s blood on its tip.

You’re lucky I only gave you a warning, I told the troll. I’m confiscating the charm you stole, and representatives from the city’s council will be here shortly to question you and to confiscate anything else you might have taken unlawfully. I suspected everything here in its nest was stolen, but the interrogation wasn’t my job. I was just the sword-for-hire, the runner of dangers. Someone who played nicer with others would be in charge of trying to get a response from my adversary that didn’t consist solely of grunts.

Well? I gave the troll one last warning tap on the spine with my sword. Faint red lines fanned outward, the result of faeries’ incurable allergy to iron. Do you understand me?

Yes, the troll whimpered. Yes, Lady Sidhe.

I’m not Sidhe, I said. I’m human.

The hilt of my sword struck the back of its head, and the troll crumpled, its hand still wedged in the earthen wall.

Job done. Even Larsen wouldn’t let me into the guild in this state, so I resigned myself to heading home first to pick up a cleansing spell from my flatmate, Isabel. Once I’d cleaned up, I’d collect my bounty. Troll dung aside, the faerie blood on my blade would attract all kinds of trouble. The kind worse than a pissed-off troll.

Twenty years on from the faeries’ arrival and we were still cleaning up their mess. Summer and Winter Sidhe might have supposedly come to Earth to stop humans destroying one another, but when they’d buggered off home, they’d left us saddled with their monsters squatting under our bridges and nesting in our rafters. There were no Seelie or Unseelie Courts here, and no path back to Faerie, but the fae probably fared better in our realm because there was a marginally lower chance of being flayed alive.

Isabel sometimes remarked that the faeries got the raw end of the deal. I wasn’t inclined to agree.

As I was setting up a ward outside the troll’s nest in case it woke up, the piskie reappeared at my side. Thanks for the help, I muttered. Really appreciate it.

The piskie fluttered its tiny gossamer wings. I am honoured, human.

I rolled my eyes. Faeries truly were the most literal creatures in existence.

Time to go home. I didn’t have far to walk—good job, because taking the bus in this state was out of the question—but Isabel and I lived on the cusp between witch and shifter territories, and it was still light enough for me to draw revolted stares from both as I made my sorry way home. By the time I’d showered, changed and left my clothes to soak in the bath, it was early evening and I was starved, so I took a detour to grab some takeout Chinese on the way to the guild. I munched on stir-fried noodles as I walked through what had once been an ordinary suburb of south Birmingham before the faeries’ invasion had ripped it in two and the exposed supernaturals laid claim to various parts of what remained. Invariably, the influx of magic into the city brought the need for those willing to do the uncomfortable work of making sure the surviving half of the regular human population didn’t suffer too much damage as a result.

The squat red-brick construction where Larsen’s guild was located had likely been a normal office building once, but now its rooms were full of weapons and storage lockers packed with questionable junk of the sort I’d found in the troll’s lair. There was a gym and a target practise hall around the back, but I only used them when nobody else was around, for the most part. Mercs were given to indulging in nonsensical competitive stunts that usually ended with the equipment broken and someone taking a hospital trip.

Larsen accosted me at the doors, wearing his usual scowl. His sloppy T-shirt-and-jeans getup was more suited to a seedy bar than an organised guild of professional mercenaries, but this was hardly an elite establishment. Anyone who couldn’t afford to hire a mage to solve their supernatural problems came to Larsen… as a last resort.

There you are. I was beginning to think I’d need to send someone after you. He looked me up and down with a mixture of suspicion and contempt, along with a not-insignificant level of annoyance that I’d come back in one piece. Why he thought being the head of what amounted to a magical lost property unit was worth lording it over everyone else was a mystery to me.

I didn’t think you wanted me to come in here covered in blood. I’d thoroughly scrubbed myself in the shower, yet I still felt like the stench clung to my skin. Not just the troll dung, but the faint aroma of decaying magic made my skin crawl like it wanted to leap clear of my body.

Blood? Larsen raised an eyebrow. You were supposed to retrieve a stolen object, not start a fight.

I’m not the one who started it, I said. I got the charm, knocked out the troll and put a ward around its nest. When clean-up go down there later, there are a bunch of other items I’m pretty sure are stolen.

And just how did you take down a troll single-handedly?

Take a guess. I gestured to the sword at my waist. Iron.

I was hardly the only human capable of defending herself from supernatural creatures. I’d had more incentive than most, but regularly escaping intact from fights with Faerie’s biggest, ugliest denizens tended to make people ask curious questions. Mostly it was a combination of witch charms and a handy skill with a blade, and Larsen wouldn’t know I had faerie magic unless I hit him in the face with it. Humans, even witches and shifters, weren’t Sighted.

Fine, he growled. Come in.

I walked through the grimy glass doors. A gorgeous woman waited in the lobby—the unnatural kind of gorgeous that practically advertised her Summer Faerie heritage with a neon sign. Golden curls flowed to her waist, and though her ears were slightly rounded, she’d never pass as human.

You found my charm?

I pulled out the sparkling object. No problem. This is a beautifying spell, isn’t it?

Yes. I need that. She snatched it from my hands.

Really? She thought she needed a beautification spell? Her face might have caused a traffic accident despite the frown pulling at her lips. Nobody pulled off melodrama quite like the faeries. She’d inherited that much from her fae side, but I’d seen her attitude a thousand times in half-faeries with parentage from the Summer or Winter Courts. They saw their human side as a curse, and though she was stunning, she couldn’t see past her own blood, which would never be good enough for Summer.

She might have sent me crawling into a troll’s nest and showed zero gratitude for it, but I knew too well how easily the words of the Sidhe could worm their way into your head. I held her gaze. Take it from me, though—you really don’t need it.

My good deed for the day done, I left the building before Larsen could jump on me again. I needed a stiff drink.

Stopping at my flat to change into something nice—finding a clean, bloodstain-free outfit was unsurprisingly difficult—I headed out to the local pub. The Singing Banshee was a dingy place that catered to supernaturals and humans alike, so I wouldn’t get too many stares walking in armed to the teeth. Two knives concealed up my sleeves, two at my ankles. Boots rather than strappy shoes, jeans rather than a short skirt. Long brown hair tied back, just in case. Simple, practical. The owner, Steve, gave me a nod when I perched on a stool against the bar, safely hidden beneath the low lighting that the pub employed alongside an ambient noise machine so that the local shifters’ heightened senses weren’t overwhelmed upon entering. My own magic was only visible to people with the Sight and most faeries would have more sense than to wander into an establishment like this, but I appreciated the anonymity.

Two shots later and my annoyance faded to a pleasant buzz. Nobody approached me at the bar. I’d acquired a reputation since a sleazy necromancer tried to grope me a couple of years ago and triggered the stinging spell I kept hidden on me. The story ended up being exaggerated. He’d regained the use of his hands again… eventually.

Being a weekend, the pub was more crowded than usual, with scruffy shifters hanging out near the pool table, witches sipping cocktails in groups, and even the odd necromancer sulking in a corner. I didn’t expect to see the mages until a flock of them walked in, all long coats and posh, cultured accents. This wasn’t your typical mage hangout, so it came as no surprise when they started whining loudly about the terrible lighting. I liked this old, dingy place precisely because mages didn’t come inside. Their territory was way over the other side of town, so what the hell they were doing here was anyone’s guess.

A couple of them shot cursory glances towards me, but otherwise I was as invisible as anyone not at their societal level. The word ‘necromancer’ floated my way, and I tuned in to their conversation long enough to gather they’d had a disagreement with the leader of the local Necromancer Guild again. Luckily, the necromancers usually never came in here either, and the ones present didn’t seem to have noticed the intrusion. Nothing ruined a night out quite like an oncoming undead horde.

Go away, I thought, sipping my vodka and coke. Luckily, the other patrons reflected my general attitude and the mages soon traipsed off, complaints lingering in their wake.

Steve rolled his eyes after them. Those mages think they’re too good for everywhere.

About right. I put down my empty glass. Bet none of them has ever seen the inside of a troll’s nest.

Grim. Steve reached out to refill my glass. Tell you what, this one’s on the house.

Cheers, I said. Steve had been on my side ever since I’d helped him kick out a piskie infestation a few years ago. Believe me, troll dung is a fucking nightmare to clean out of denim.

You ought to ask for hazard pay, he said. It’s exploitation, what Larsen does.

It’s work. I shrugged. I get the benefits and accept the hazards. If I asked for a raise I’d be out on the streets.

I had no intention of ending up out there again. I’d signed up at the mercenary guild ten years ago when people were desperate enough to hire anyone to help with their supernatural-related issues, even a sixteen-year-old girl, and while I was a tad pickier with new cases than I’d been back then, we’d be far worse off if I gave the guild the middle finger. Yes, Isabel would accuse me of avoiding facing my problems if I told her that, but she’d never been on the receiving end of one of Larsen’s beer-soaked rants.

Besides, since most of my problems would happily eat me alive, given the chance, I saw no issue in avoiding them.

A shout rang across the pub. I snapped my head around, the back of my neck prickling. My gaze panned over the crowd until I spied a short, dishevelled man in jeans and jacket, too far away for me to make out his features.

Not that Trevor Swanson again, said Steve, resting his elbows on the counter.

I turned back to the bar, watching the man out of the corner of my eye. Who?

Swanson. That bloke over there… his kid went missing last night.

A chill raced down my spine. Hearing those words always sent my mind careening in directions I didn’t want it to, even though children disappearing was hardly uncommon here in the suburbs where supernaturals and humans mingled and the faeries had left irreversible damage.

Swanson rose upward, the light falling on his face and on the person he spoke to. The man, who’d been hidden in shadow until now, wore a suit entirely too well-tailored for an establishment like this. His strong-boned face, well-combed hair and smart attire would have drawn my attention even if he hadn’t pulled out the sword.

It wasn’t unheard of to see someone carrying a sword on the street. It was decidedly less common to see someone pull a hand-and-a-half sword out of thin air.

I kept stock still, unwilling to draw attention to myself despite my curiosity. The mage held the sword in a loose grip, but from his stance, I could tell he knew how to use it, and that the first guy had picked a fight with the worst possible opponent in the room—including me.

Swanson shrank away, stark terror flitting across his expression. Shit, he said. I didn’t know you were—

Lord Colton, the head of the mages, said Steve from behind the bar. Oh, boy. He’s in trouble.

I felt the blood drain from my own face. That guy was the head of the mages? Rumour said… well, rumour said a lot of things, but everyone agreed that since he’d gained leadership, the mages had begun to implement measures that made it downright difficult for a witch to use magic professionally without being a member of a coven. While my friendship with Isabel had spared me a visit from the authorities thus far, if he happened to glance at me, and if his purportedly sharp senses picked up on the tell-tale glow of faerie magic around me, my cover would be blown.

I ducked my head, gripping the edge of the bar between my fingertips. Few things in this world scared me, but this particular head mage had acquired a reputation and a half in the months he’d held the title. The shifters insisted he kept a bunch of troll heads hanging in his office inside the mages’ headquarters and that he could take off someone’s head without even touching them.

Yet I didn’t give a rat’s arse whether he knew about my unconventional magic—I cared more about word reaching places I didn’t want it to.

If you’d prefer to have a more civilised conversation, what did you wish to ask me? The mage’s smooth, cultured voice drew my gaze against my will. I was too far away to tell what his magical abilities might be, aside from the trick with the sword, but he didn’t give off serial killer vibes. Then again, appearances could be deceptive. Anyone who’d been around faeries knew that.

The man who’d shouted at Lord Colton rocked back on his feet, ducking his head. My… my kid, said Swanson tremulously. He went missing a week ago. The police haven’t done a thing to help, and we’re desperate to have him back.

I thought that’s what you shouted at me, said the Mage Lord. Missing persons aren’t my area, unless you wish to hire one of my mages. We charge reasonable rates.

Do you, now? The man appeared to recover some of his confidence. Your doorman slammed the door in my face.

Oh, man. The mage didn’t look angry—that I could tell from this distance, anyway—but there was little doubt he could kill everyone in this room if he wanted to. Missing kid or not, threatening the head of the mages was a good way to end up with your head mounted on the wall.

Lord Colton’s voice, however, betrayed nothing. If you wish to hire one of my mages, please address all correspondence to my receptionist, Wanda. I don’t take bribes, and unless magic is involved in this case, it’s absolutely none of my business.

Friendly. What a piece of work. I hadn’t met the last Mage Lord in person, but it was plain to see that they hadn’t improved their manners in the past decade. The other mages hovered in the pub’s entryway, half-hidden by the low lighting, and I found myself wondering if the entirety of their ranks consisted of clones of the same Generic Thirty-Something White Man in Suit.

Admittedly, I wouldn’t call Lord Colton generic. The light of his blade reflected in stormy grey eyes visible even in the low lighting, and the air crackled above his shoulders like a lightning storm about to break out in the middle of the pub. It was rare enough that I set eyes upon a human magic user with that much raw power that it was difficult not to stare, but I ducked my head as the Mage Lord’s gaze swept the bar one last time.

Then he left in a sweep of his long cloak. I breathed out, the tension in the room easing somewhat. The murmur of conversation resumed, though considerably muted compared to beforehand.

Mages never come in here, I heard someone say. Creepy as the necromancers, they are.

Scary dude, said Steve. I didn’t even see him come in.

Probably blended into the crowd, I said. Or used a mage trick. Like with the sword. What the hell kind of magic was that? Most mage magic was flashes and sparks, not screwing with the laws of physics. Magic rarely astounded me these days, but that was a hell of a party trick.

Right, I’m off. I hopped off my stool. I’d had entirely too much excitement for what was supposed to be a quiet night off. Isabel was at a coven meeting, so I’d stay up until she got back, and we’d have a good rant about the mages together.

I walked down the road to the flat, scanning the shadows out of habit. We lived miles from anywhere the fae made their homes, but occasionally, nasties from work followed me to the doorstep. Wards blazed from every corner of the building to protect us from that eventuality, and an unbroken ring of magic-forged iron surrounded the fence around the front garden, too. Isabel didn’t want piskies getting into her flowerbeds, where she grew rare herbs to use in spells. The closest I’d come to telling her about Faerie was when I’d explained why I’d prefer not to have plants inside the house. The scars all over my body from a bad experience involving a faerie’s magical thorns turning me into a human pincushion spoke for themselves, but even Isabel hadn’t heard the full story.

Once over the boundary, I relaxed my guard and approached the doorstep. Then I stopped, heart sinking, as a figure stepped from the shadows.

Swanson, the guy who’d been foolish enough to pick a fight with the head of the mages himself in a desperate bid to save his child, waited outside my flat.

2

Trevor Swanson looked at me with desperation in his eyes. I could put two and two together easily enough.

You want to hire me? If the wards had let him in, he didn’t intend me harm, and he was pure human to boot. I usually close after five, but you can come inside for a chat.

Sometimes, I wanted to knock myself for being too nice, but after the way that obnoxious mage had treated him, I just didn’t have it in me to turn him away. Besides, I needed the money.

Or so I told myself.

Thanks to Isabel’s top-notch dirt-repelling wards, no blood or questionable stains remained on the stairs or in the carpeted hallway from when I’d walked in here in my ruined clothes. She’d taken to setting up the spells in the hall after the incident a few years ago when I’d come back from a bad job covered in redcap entrails and had wound up spending hours scrubbing fae innards out of the carpet with an irate landlord threatening to revoke our security deposit.

My bloodstained clothes were still soaking in the bathroom and the flat smelled strongly of spell-disinfectant, but that was a mile better than troll dung. I switched on a couple of lamps before Swanson stumbled over the many obstacles littering our living room, which doubled as Isabel’s workshop and was full of so many tripwire spells that if Swanson had meant me any kind of ill intent, he’d have been bodily thrown outside. As it was, he nervously watched the flat door as I pushed the bolt into place and then jumped when a winged piskie flitted overhead.

Get out. The piskie, who went by the name of Erwin, had been around since before we’d moved in, and no amount of iron would deter the little bugger from flying around like he owned the place. I’m seeing a client.

The piskie buzzed into Isabel’s room, and I closed the door, smothering a sigh. How he managed to continuously fly past our iron wards, I’d probably never know. He had the intelligence and attention span of a gnat.

Swanson looked decidedly uncomfortable when he took in the faint glow of Isabel’s candles placed at intervals around the chalk symbols drawn on the carpet and the bottles of glowing liquid on the coffee table, but I didn’t have an office, and we didn’t entertain a lot of non-magical clients. He’d have to deal with it.

Sit down, I said. I’d offer you a drink, but I guess you’ve had a few already.

He didn’t look angry anymore, just tired, his eyes sunken with a despondent look I tried not to look too closely at. This was going to be rough. Maybe I needed another drink after all. What happened?

He cleared his throat. Dustin didn’t come home last week after a night out at the park. It’s not the first time, but… I got a bad feeling. He’s been in trouble before, so the police looked the other way when I told them. The rough edge to his voice clawed me somewhere deep inside. Even if I could have afforded to be picky with the jobs I took on, I couldn’t quell the instinctive response to every missing children case that crossed my path. My own history aside, any child that went missing in a city teeming with wild fae would be lucky to make it through the night.

What’s your offer? I asked.

Ten thousand.

My jaw hung loose for a moment until I schooled my expression back into something resembling professionalism. Ten grand? Seriously? There had to be a catch. As my gaze lingered on him, Swanson averted his eyes and glanced over his shoulder. I’d chalk up the gesture to not wanting to be overheard, except I’d sealed the door, and he’d seen me do it.

What else? I gave him my best no bullshit stare. What haven’t you told me? There’s got to be a reason you picked a fight with the head of the mages. They don’t usually deal with missing people.

No, he said, but I thought they might deal with changelings.

The word rang through my head. I stood rigid, cold sweat gathering on the back of my neck, cursing my body’s instinctive response to the word.

Changeling.

I was getting the hell away from this case. Now.

Sorry, I can’t help you, I said crisply. I strictly work on human cases, or minor spellwork. Nothing faerie-related.

Swanson’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. Please.

Dammit. No. I couldn’t. Searching for missing kids, sure. I took on every case, even the ones with the worst outcome. Changelings, though? They shouldn’t exist. Not anymore.

Twenty thousand.

Fuck. The curse escaped before I could stop it. Listen, it’s not the money I care about. I don’t deal with—them.

Then why do you have a piskie living in your house?

Piskies are harmless household pests. Faerie lords are… not. Replace the word ‘not’ with your epithet of choice. I wouldn’t say ‘sadistic dickheads with a penchant for torturing humans for kicks’ in front of him, but that was reason enough to turn him down and walk away with my life and sanity intact. Yet if I said no, I knew the guilt would burrow deep inside me, joining the other burdens resting upon my heart.

I’m sorry, I said, my tone softening. "I don’t think I can be much help. If it is a faerie… I wouldn’t even know where to start looking. You should talk to the mages again. They know more than I do."

A lie. I didn’t know every corner of the city like the mages did, but I knew more about the faeries than a lifetime of therapy would erase. And I knew that escaping their realm alive once was no guarantee of a repeat performance.

Please. His voice cracked on the word.

Dammit. Tell me what happened. If the faerie who took him isn’t in our realm anymore, nobody can follow, including me. How do you know he was taken? Did you see this… changeling?

Yes, and he’s not acting like Dustin at all. He’s thirteen, and usually I know what he’s thinking, but recently, he’s changed. He… he tried to kill our dog. There was blood everywhere. After I stopped him, he brought— He swallowed. He brought rats into the house. I found them dead on his bedroom floor, surrounded by… by spells. I think they were spells. Nasty-looking ones.

I suppressed a shiver. Have you tried setting up iron wards around the house?

His blank expression told me he hadn’t lied about his lack of knowledge, at least. Why?

I took in a breath. You need a crash course in all things Faerie. I can’t promise it’ll be pleasant, but for now, put an iron ward around your house. I leaned over to the coffee table, careful not to knock any of the candles or bottles over, and picked up a metallic-coloured band. If activated, it’d cover the immediate area in a faerie-proof ward. Isabel had a whole cupboard full of them, though they varied in strength, and this one wouldn’t last more than a week.

He took the band, wearing a sceptical expression. This will keep the faeries out? Why… why would they come in the first place? Is this like… like the ones that came twenty years ago?

No, I said, a little too sharply. Those were Summer and Winter Sidhe lords, and it’s against their laws to steal human children. If Dustin was taken by one of the fae, we’re looking at someone who’s breaking the laws of both realms.

But… why’d they pick us? We’re not magical.

I opened my mouth then closed it. I never understood how faeries’ minds worked. I hadn’t been magical, either, when I was taken. It didn’t seem to matter. Some people just drew the shitty straw. I’ll drop by tomorrow and have a look around, I evaded. I can drive off the changeling and find the faerie who took Dustin. If they’re still in this realm. If not…

His eyes went wide. Dustin’s in the faerie realm?

Unlikely, I added, though my heart gave a familiar squeeze. Like I said, there are laws, and most fae can’t even cross between realms. Except Sidhe, and they usually don’t have any reason to take an interest in humans. It’s far more likely to be a faerie from this realm playing a prank.

I don’t understand, he said. I thought the faeries could cross between our realm and their own. Isn’t that what they did?

Usually only highly adept Sidhe lords can cross over. The invasion was the only exception that I know of. No lies there. I can’t pretend I understand how it works, but even most faeries living on this side can’t go back to their own realm. They’re stuck here. That means the faerie’s more likely to be in this realm than not.

His bloodshot gaze caught mine, beseeching. Are you sure?

No. Maybe. Ninety-five percent sure. We’ll talk more tomorrow.

I’ll come back first thing.

If you give me your address, I can come to yours and get started right away, I said. I’ll bring my standard contract. Unless you’d like to sign now.

Yes, he said immediately.

The poor guy was way out of his depth. That much had been obvious even before he’d revealed he’d willingly sign a contract in a witch’s living room drenched in magical paraphernalia when he had less magic than your average troll.

I hope I don’t regret this. Isabel’s spells were the best in the region, and I had no trouble tracking people within this realm.

Bring in the faeries, though, and all bets were off.

Okay. I crossed the room to the desk in the corner and shifted a stack of papers aside to extract a form displaying my signature and my terms. His eyes roved over the page without taking in a word, and then he scribbled his signature at the bottom.

Call me tomorrow morning, I said, when he’d handed me the signed form. We’ll get started then, but I can’t make any promises that I’ll be able to help. Faerie magic isn’t something most humans understand. I certainly don’t.

More of a white lie this time, but I’d rather not get his hopes up any more than I had to. Swanson nodded, mumbling thanks, as I unlocked the door and let him outside.

I took some calming breaths and considered the facts. No Sidhe had entered our realm in over twenty years. No human had crossed between the realms in ten, as far as I knew. The other faeries left behind after the invasion, based on my shaky knowledge, had no way back. That included the kidnapper, but I’d need to see the fake ‘child’ and ask some choice questions to get to the bottom of how they’d created a changeling in the first place.

I was lugging my ruined clothes from the bathtub when Isabel came into the flat, wearing one of her usual long flowery dresses and more shiny bangles on her slim brown arms than the inside of the troll’s nest. Despite her innocent appearance and general mild-mannered nature, she could hold her own in a fight. I’d once seen her kick a half-ogre through a window, and she was five feet tall and probably weighed a hundred pounds, if that.

Wow, she said. I take it the case didn’t go well?

It went. I examined my jeans, wondering how many times I could stitch them back together before they came apart at the seams. Probably one less time than I’d done it. Looked like I was due for another shopping trip, with the money I didn’t have.

Yet.

I left my leather jacket in the bath to soak a bit longer and brought my jeans into the living room to show Isabel the damage. Got a repair spell handy?

You know you could use a needle and thread instead.

Your way is sturdier. Witches might not be into flashy magic, but her spell would last longer than any inexpert sewing attempt I tried. Until I had to crawl into another troll’s nest.

Isabel fished a spell from among the pile on the desk next to the stack of forms. A non-witch might assume that she was a stationery fanatic, since most of her spells took the form of rubber bands, while her handmade point-and-shoot explosives resembled pencils or pens. The witches were encouraged to make their spells look like household objects because it reassured clients that the arcane forces they tapped into were relatively harmless. I didn’t blame Swanson for his alarmed reaction, though, considering the number of chalk symbols drawn on the carpets and the burn stains on the walls from test-driving new spells. My closest friend was the best I knew at both offensive and defensive witch magic, and her spells had saved my neck more times than I could count.

Someone was here. She brushed spell-dust off her hands. A client?

New one, yeah. I sank into an armchair. I had to sink, because the second-hand furniture had a tendency to collapse without warning.

I wouldn’t tell the landlord, Isabel said. You know what he’s like about letting ‘weirdos’ into the flat.

I snorted. Has he ever met us?

She grinned and shook her head. You know what I mean. Weirdos who don’t pay rent.

We don’t always, I reminded her. Witches earned a pittance, while my own payments depended on whether Larsen was feeling particularly generous. Jobs had been few and far between lately, and he only suffered me to keep coming into the guild because I kept all the nasty faeries away. Like keeping a bad-tempered cat to get rid of a mouse infestation.

This new case… what is it? She watched me hold up my newly repaired jeans, the knees as seamless as the day I’d fished them out of the bargain bin. Must be urgent, if they came here after dark.

It’s a tricky one, I admitted, not wanting to go into specifics. There was still a chance Swanson had imagined the changeling part. Funny how those legends stuck around, even in this grim new reality where the faeries didn’t need to steal humans away to their own realm to inflict a grisly fate upon them.

I’d told Isabel the bare bones of my own story, just enough that she didn’t question my eccentricities, but she’d been young enough when her fellow witches came out of hiding in the aftermath of the Sidhe’s arrival that she’d never set eyes upon one of them. If they’d ever come here since, I didn’t know. They hid themselves well… unless they wanted you to see them.

Tricky how?

Missing kid, suspected faerie involvement, I said. The mages refused to help, and I couldn’t say no.

Missing kid? She studied me in a shrewd manner. I’d tried not to give too much of my own history away, but there were only so many conclusions she could draw from my interest in those cases. She knew I was an orphan of the invasion, like her, but when it came to my past, the word ‘complicated’ was an understatement.

Yeah. I need to visit the Swansons’ house first. Just in case he’s mistaken his own kid for an evil faerie. It can happen.

Isabel gave me one of her you’re bullshitting me looks. I assume you gave him an iron spell?

Had to. He doesn’t know about faerie wards. The mages left him in the dark. Or one guy in particular. I shoved away the image of the lethal blade appearing from nowhere. Whatever the Mage Lord had been doing in this part of town, I’d probably never see him again. I’ll need a tracking spell, I think.

I’ll get one ready. Isabel cleared a space on the floor, deftly moving candles around.

You’re the best, you know that? She didn’t charge me for spells, claiming they were enough compensation for the holes she occasionally blew in the walls. To which I argued that between the explosions and the monster guts, we both caused equal destruction, but after seven years being flatmates, I’d given up trying to offer her money. Her argument was that she enjoyed what she did.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed my job most of the time, but my skill set didn’t leave many options open. Since my return, mundane jobs had felt as out of reach as the world before the faeries came. My CV consisted of survival skills and little else, I didn’t play nicely in a team, and frankly, it was a wonder I’d even found a flatmate. I’d had multiple failed attempts until I’d put out an online ad with the words: Requires a high tolerance for blood and entrails. Weapons are fine, but no musical instruments. In fact, no music in general.

Somehow, the ad had drawn in Isabel, who claimed she didn’t mind the quiet and that her skill with cleansing spells would more than compensate for the mess I left everywhere. Her own requirements revolved around not reporting her questionable spell experiments to the landlord, but I wasn’t a tattletale and I’d lost enough security deposits of my own. Isabel knew some of my demons, but not all of them.

I went to retrieve my jacket from the bathtub. Blood lingered in the water, crimson tinged with the blue from the cleansing spell I’d wrapped around the sleeve. I removed the spell—another rubber-band-shaped device—and watched it crumble into blue fragments as I pulled the plug. A swirling vortex of lines lingered above the water, a remnant of the potent magic present in faerie blood.

Leaving the room, I decided to double up on the wards around my room tonight, even if it meant making that piskie hate me for the next week. I preferred to keep my demons caged.

3

The following morning started with a blissful five minutes of imagining I might get to lie in on a Sunday, before a shrill noise brought me crashing back to reality. Groaning, I rolled over and picked up my phone. It was an old touchscreen model I’d bought second hand and had a jagged cut down the screen, but it worked well enough. Hello?

Ivy Lane? This is Mr Swanson.

Oh crap. God help me, I’d said yes. I swung my legs over the bed and did my absolute best to sound like a professional who hadn’t just dragged herself out of bed. Hi. Did you manage to get the iron ward set up?

We did, but the changeling escaped.

Dammit. I’ll be there in five minutes.

Glad I’d showered extensively the day before to wash every taint of faerie blood from my skin, I hurriedly dressed and grabbed my backpack, plus knives, which I shoved into their holsters on my belt. I kept them by my bed for easy access, along with jars of salt, iron filings, and herbs that repelled various other supernatural menaces.

Isabel raised an eyebrow as I ran past, grabbing the spells she’d prepared from the table and shoving them into my backpack. I take it you don’t have time for cookies.

Dammit. Isabel’s baking was possibly the best in existence. The world really hated me sometimes.

Save me some for later, I said. I’ve got to talk to this guy first.

Okay. I’ll probably be at the Cavanaughs’ upstairs. Their ceiling’s leaking, and I said I’d help.

Cool. I pulled out my phone again to check on Swanson’s address, groaning as I realised he lived in the more affluent part of town, which meant I’d have to ride the bus. Most of the local drivers hated me by this point because of all the times I’d walked on covered in blood, but I sucked it up and walked to the bus stop.

The day was crisp and clear for early autumn, ragged leaves blowing through the streets. The picture of mundaneness, at least on the outside. Typically, a half-faerie got onto the bus one stop after me and proceeded to loudly complain to the driver about my not-concealed iron weapons. Far from in the mood for an argument, I jumped off two stops early and ran the rest of the way.

The houses turned from broken-down old blocks of flats to rows of nice suburban houses like a picture straight out of the old, pre-invasion world. The roads had no potholes, the parks were well maintained, and everything seemed to shine like someone had flung a dirt-proof ward over the entire area. Probably true, considering I stood on the brink of mage territory. I stared through the window of a particularly nice house for a moment, watching two kids enthralled by some show playing on the wall-sized TV. Was this how my own childhood had been, minus the magic? This part of town didn’t look like a war had hit it. There was nothing left of the place I’d grown up in.

I gave myself a mental shake. Quit reminiscing and get on with the job, Ivy.

I turned into the right street and approached the house the Swanson family lived in. Nothing struck me as out of place, though the slight shimmering around the door showed Swanson had managed to set up the iron ward I’d given him. Was the changeling hiding inside the house, or had it run outside to avoid the iron?

One way to find out. I rang the doorbell, shifting my backpack on my shoulder.

Swanson answered, his shadowed eyes suggesting that he hadn’t slept a wink since we’d last spoken. His greying hair stuck up at all angles. Several scratch marks on his arms indicated the changeling had revealed its true colours, unless he’d been attacked by something else.

Hey, I said. I’m set. Where’s… the changeling? I’d almost said, ‘your son’, but that was more a desperate attempt at optimism talking. If it turned out his son was into dark magic, it could be dealt with. Faeries, though…

The changeling’s hiding, he said. It saw the iron and ran.

Luckily, I’d come prepared. Each kind of faerie needed slightly different bait, so I’d stashed a variety in my backpack. Changelings were an oddity, though, and not one I knew enough about to make an educated guess on how to catch it.

What are you doing? asked Swanson as I crouched in the hallway and began sifting through the contents of my bag. Isabel colour-coded her spells, and trackers took the form of green rubber bands. I took one in my hand.

Tracking the changeling. I held the spell for him to see. This is witch-made. I normally use them on humans, but it ought to work on faeries, too.

Swanson didn’t move. I thought you were going to find my son.

Admittedly, tracking humans was easier than fae. All right, do you have anything of your son’s I can use? Hair works best. Or fingernails, but I distinctly preferred the former.

Every nerve in my body told me this was a bad idea, but I stayed put while Swanson went upstairs and came back with a few golden curls of hair.

I’ll have to do the spell inside the house, I said. It’s warded, so it’ll be fine. I couldn’t quite cover the lie in my voice this time.

Swanson led the way into the living room. A pale, dark-haired woman sat with her head down and what appeared to be an old T-shirt tightly clenched in her hands. Must belong to their kid. The sofa looked like genuine leather, the TV mounted to the wall was the same size as the one in the house whose window I’d peered through, but none of their money or material possessions had been able to save their son.

Mrs Swanson lifted her head, her pleading eyes meeting mine. Are you here to help find Dustin?

I’m going to use a tracking spell, if that’s okay. I held up the band. I can track your son, but only if he’s still in this realm.

Those words had the exact effect I’d dreaded. Two sets of horrified eyes stared at me. In this realm?

If he was taken to Faerie… like I said, I won’t be able to follow, and I don’t know what effect it’ll have on the spell either. It was only fair to warn them. Do you still want me to try?

Yes, of course. Swanson’s eyes followed me as I set the spell down on the carpeted floor and tapped the band’s side, causing its edges to expand into a larger circle. My heart was already hammering, and I subtly shifted the sword at my waist, ready to grab it if things turned bad.

Then I threw the golden hairs into the centre of the makeshift circle. Green light flared up around the edges, and I leaned forward. The Swansons wouldn’t see anything but a meaningless blur of lights, but to anyone with the remotest sensitivity to magic, the spell would reveal the location of the person whose traces I’d placed into the circle.

I held my breath. The lights swirled, forming patterns that dazzled my eyes and made my head spin. Then the spell winked out, the green light turning grey, lifeless.

An icy chill ran down my spine. For the spell not to work meant one of two things: the faerie had put a spell-resistant charm on its captive… or it had left this realm behind.

Mrs Swanson’s face fell. Didn’t it work?

I didn’t know what they’d seen, if anything, but the expression on my face had likely been enough. Are either of you magically sensitive?

She shook her head. Why?

Just curious. Mostly because I couldn’t figure out why their kid had been taken, but now the spell had failed, I could no longer cling to any remaining traces of denial about what we were dealing with. The spell didn’t work, but I can track the changeling instead.

Why didn’t it work? croaked Swanson. Yesterday… you said most faeries can’t cross over from their realm.

That was true, I said, but faerie magic works on a different level to what we humans understand. Faerie plays by its own rules.

We might have had to adapt to their arrival, but we were no closer to comprehending our invaders than the day before magic had exploded across the country and brought a flock of dangerous faerie warriors along with it who cared nothing for collateral damage as they razed half our city to the ground.

Nobody? Swanson echoed. But… there are faeries in the city, aren’t there? If you spoke to one of them, wouldn’t they be able to tell you more?

I might have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Faeries didn’t talk to humans, not in the conversational sense. The sole exception in my life was the piskie living in my flat, who had the IQ of a goldfish and had probably been born in the attic we’d found him nesting in.

Not really, I said. Most faeries around these days were born in this realm after the invasion or fled when the paths between the realms opened. They don’t belong to Summer or Winter. And I doubt they know how magic works regardless. Most faeries on this side don’t have much.

After the Sidhe lords had left this realm in ruins, they’d departed, either for the Courts or for the place that lay outside of their boundaries.

A place I hadn’t mentioned to the Swansons.

Between Summer and Winter existed a neutral zone of sorts where the Court’s rules didn’t apply. If the faerie who’d taken Swanson’s kid had come from there, no advice I offered would matter a bit, and it would be far kinder to tell them that Dustin had been found dead in an alley. Death was nothing compared to the fate that might befall a human who set foot in that part of Faerie.

Swanson considered my words. You said you can track the changeling, though?

If it’s still around. I doubted a simple changeling would have the power to cross over between realms, so the creature would likely still be hiding somewhere nearby. I put away the dead spell and pulled a fresh one from my backpack, laying it atop where the faint remnants of the first remained. Luckily for their expensive carpet, trackers didn’t leave permanent marks.

Do you have anything the changeling left behind? I ought to have thought of that before I set up the circle, but this whole situation had rattled me beyond belief and made me forget the basics.

Swanson walked into the hallway. Upstairs, but his room… it’s a mess.

Oh boy. Gritting my teeth, I followed him into the hallway and up the carpeted stairs. Through the door on the right lay what looked like the inside of a necromancer’s lair, or a witch who’d gone bad. Symbols were etched all over the floor, unfamiliar glyphs that made the hairs rise on my arms. Blood soaked into the carpet, and several small furry bodies lay in the centre. Rats. I pressed a hand to my mouth, trying to calm my breathing.

This… it’s what they call dark magic. Most witches objected to magic being pigeonholed into narrow definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but any spells that involved dead animals were invariably designed to cause harm and were strictly forbidden by the Mage Lords. Why the hell would a faerie changeling be messing with these props?

Swanson hesitated by the door, his expression telling me he was as reluctant to go into the room as I was. One of us had to make the first move, so I stepped over the threshold, my gaze averted from the blood. Behind the ghastly scene were the posters of sports teams, comic books and video game collection of an ordinary teenage boy. I concentrated on that image. I was doing this to save an innocent person from the faeries. An innocent person who didn’t have magic.

Just like I hadn’t.

I crouched down, searching the carpet. Several fine hairs lay there, and when I held them up to the light, they shone silver. The kind of unnaturally bright silvery hair that could only belong to a faerie.

The faint smell of burning caught in my nostrils. I sniffed again, my gaze snagging on one of the candles. Though someone had clearly been in here since and knocked everything askew, the glyphs that had been carved into the carpet with a sharp object formed a circle, encasing the rats’ dead bodies. At a guess, the candles had been placed at intervals around the edges, too.

It’s a summoning circle. Necromancers used them to summon spirits. Not a branch of magic I was particularly an expert in, but the same went for the faeries. Changelings weren’t capable of that level of magic, or so I’d thought.

What’s that? asked Swanson in a hushed voice. Summoning what?

You don’t want to know. I’m going to have to dismantle it. I can’t leave this stuff unattended up here even if the changeling’s gone.

I might have called the necromancers, but they lived on the other side of town. This was mage territory, and they had as little to do with necromancy as I did. If I didn’t scrub the place before the changeling came back, the place might turn into a portal of hell long before the necromancers deigned to send anyone to help.

I signed inwardly. Just for once, I’d have preferred a weekend lie-in like a normal person.

On careful feet, I skirted the blackened spell circle and crouched to examine the fading glyphs. I’d have noticed if any were still active, but I wasn’t enough of a fool to touch the circle itself. I reached into my pocket for a salt canister I’d kept on hand since the infamous zombie night a few years ago when a necromancer apprentice had left the doors of the local cemetery unlocked. Didn’t do a thing for faeries, but salt would more than suffice for nullifying a necromantic trap. After opening the container, I tipped the contents onto the glyphs.

A high-pitched scream came from downstairs. Swanson’s wife.

Oh, shit.

4

Ivaulted both circles and ran downstairs without pausing for breath, my sword already in my hand. Swanson shouted out, and I leaped the last two stairs as Mrs Swanson ran from the living room, pursued by something big, black and furred. Sharp teeth snapped on her heels, and I swore, pushing myself between her and the monster. Or rather, hellhound. I hadn’t had the pleasure of dealing with one of those for a while.

I slashed with the blade, catching the creature’s nose. Blood spurted in a crimson fountain. The dog hissed between its teeth, shaking droplets onto the thick carpet and staining the white wallpaper. I bloody well hoped Isabel’s cleansing spells would be strong enough to spare me from having to surrender a huge chunk of my payment towards the cleaning bills, but if any of its acidic drool got onto the carpet, no spell would fix the damage.

I glanced over my shoulder. Swanson had opened the front door, and he and his wife had fled outside, which would normally be the sensible decision, except the wards only covered the house, and the street outside was wide open.

Staying in the house wasn’t an option, so I backed away, goading the monster to follow me by moving my blade in a figure-eight motion. I kept walking out of the front door, taking care to keep the beast’s eyes on me and not on the two humans cowering behind the garden fence.

Guys, I said to the Swansons out of the corner of my mouth. Get behind the iron ward. There might be more than one of them outside.

I didn’t see if they did as I asked, because the hellhound chose that moment to try to take a bite out of my face. I stepped to the side and sank my blade into its flank. Blood poured from the wound, thick and reddish blue. Its teeth snapped again, and I ducked, bringing my sword in an arc to sink into its thick neck. Flesh gave way beneath Irene’s blade, and the hellhound fell with a pained squeal.

Right as a second one appeared at the side of the house.

Damn. How many were there? Hellhounds were rejects from the Wild Hunt. They sure as hell didn’t come from this realm, least of all a magic-free corner of the city like this. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed faces watching me from windows, wide eyes upon the hellhound’s body slumped in the middle of the road. When the second saw its fallen companion, it roared, drool splattering the road in sizzling green puddles. Thanking the universe that none of that shit had got onto the carpet, I called, Come and get me.

Waving my sword, I darted down the alley alongside the house. The beast followed, squeezing its bulk into the alley faster than I’d anticipated. I drove my blade at its flank, a superficial cut, but enough to splatter the alley with blood.

I aimed for a killing blow