CHAPTER 1
“Could you at least wait until I open the window to shake that thing?” Iris shot me a nasty look as I yanked the braided rug off the floor and started beating it against the wall. “I can barely breathe, there’s so much dust.”
Chagrined, I dropped the rug to the floor and gave her a sheepish look. Dust didn’t bother me, and sometimes I forgot other people had to breathe. “Sorry,” I said. “Open the window, and I’ll shake it outside.”
Rolling her eyes, she lifted the sash and pushed it up as far as she could. I took over, finishing the job. A wash of warm summer air filtered through the open window along with the sounds of horns honking, blaring music, and laughter from a gang of street kids who were smoking weed in the back alley behind the Wayfarer. The air had a happy-go-lucky feel to it, a stir of excitement, like a street party about to spontaneously erupt.
I leaned over the sill, waving to one of the boys who was staring up at me. His name was Chester, but he went by Chit, and he and his buddies had become a fixture around the bar over the past few months. Too young to come in, they hung around out back, and every now and then I’d make sure they got a good meal from the grill. They were good kids—a little at loose ends, but they never caused much trouble, and they weren’t gangbangers or druggies. In fact, they kept some of the less desirable elements from hanging out in the alleys.
Chit waved back. “Yo, Menolly! What’s shakin’, babe?”
I grinned. I was far, far older than he, although I didn’t look it. But like a number of the younger FBH men I’d met, he flirted with every woman who looked under forty, especially if they were Fae. And though I was only half-Fae, and a vampire to boot, he treated me like I was just another one of the locals.
“Just getting around to some long-overdue cleaning,” I called down to him, waving again before I turned back to Iris, who was poking around an old-world trunk that had been hiding in a corner of the room.
Since I now owned the entire building the Wayfarer Bar & Grill resided in, I decided it was time to clear out some of the rooms over the bar and turn them into a paying resource. My sisters and I could furnish them, rent them out to Otherworld visitors, and make a nice chunk of change.
Even though we were back on the Court and Crown’s payroll, money was still going out faster than it was coming in. Especially since we were paying Tim Winthrop for the computer work he was doing for the Supe Community.
The Wayfarer’s second story held ten rooms, two of them bathrooms. And it looked like all of them had remained untouched for years. Piles of junk and thick layers of dust permeated the entire story. Iris and I’d finished one room, but it had taken us two nights to sort through the boxes filled with newspaper and old clothes.
I stretched, arching my back, and shook my head. “What a mess.”
The room had obviously been turned into a storage room, probably by Jocko, who wasn’t the cleanest bartender the Wayfarer had ever seen. Unfortunately, the diminutive giant had met an untimely end at the hand of Bad Ass Luke, a demon from the Subterranean Realms.
Jocko had lived in one of the Otherworld Intelligence Agency’s designated apartments in the city, and I was pretty sure he’d never slept at the bar. We hadn’t found any giant-sized clothes hanging around. At least not yet. But it was obvious that someone from Otherworld had stayed here at one time, because she’d left a bunch of her things here. I recognized the weave on a couple of tunics. They certainly hadn’t been made over here Earthside.
Iris snorted. “Mess is certainly the word, isn’t it? Now, if you’ll get your albino butt over here, I could use some help moving this trunk.” Hands on her hips, she nodded to the wooden chest she’d uncovered from beneath a pile of newspapers.
Shaken out of my reverie, I lifted the trunk with one hand and effortlessly carried it to the center of the room. Being a vampire had its perks, and extraordinary strength was one of them. I wasn’t all that much taller than Iris—skimming five one, I towered over her by a mere thirteen inches—but I could have easily lifted a creature five times her weight.
“Where on Earth are your sisters? I thought they were going to help.”
The Talon-haltija—Finnish house sprite—brushed a stray cobweb off her forehead, leaving a smudge from the grime that had embedded itself in her hands. Her ankle-length golden hair had been pulled into a long ponytail, and she’d carefully woven it into a thick chignon to get it out of the way. Iris was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a red and white gingham sleeveless blouse, with the ends tied together under her breasts. A pair of blue Keds completed her country-maid ensemble.
I grinned. “They are helping, in their own special ways. Camille’s at the store buying more cleaning supplies and dinner. Delilah’s out scrounging up a pickup so we can haul away some of this junk.” I’d left running the bar to Chrysandra for the evening. She knew where I was, and she was my best waitress. Luke was bartending, and he’d take care of any jerks that stumbled in. Tavah, as usual, was guarding the portal in the basement.
“Special my foot,” Iris mumbled, but she flashed me a brilliantly white smile. She had good teeth, that was for sure. “Let’s see what this old chest holds. Probably dead mice, with our luck.”
“If it does, don’t tell Delilah. She’d want to play with them.” I knelt beside her, examining the lock. “Looks like we need a skeleton key if you don’t want me to bust it open.”
“Forget about keys,” Iris said. She leaned over and deftly inserted a bobby pin into the oversized hole, then whispered a soft chant. Within seconds, the latch clicked. I gave her a long look, and she shrugged.
“What? Simple locks I can pop. Dead bolts, not so much. Life is easier when you don’t have to worry about locks and bars.”
“I would have to agree,” I said, opening the lid. As it softly creaked, the faint odor of cedar rose to fill the air. Even though I didn’t need to breathe, that didn’t mean I couldn’t smell—at least when I chose to—and I allowed the aroma to filter through my senses. Mingled with the fragrance of tobacco and frankincense, the scent was dusty, like an old library thick with leather and heavy oak furniture. It reminded me of our parlor, back home in Otherworld.
Iris peeked over the edge. “Pay dirt!”
I glanced into the trunk’s belly. No dead mice. No gems or jewels, either, but there were clothes and several books and what looked like a music box. I slowly lifted the box out of the soft cushion of dresses in which it had been nestled. The wood was definitely harvested from Otherworld.
“Arnikcah,” I said, peering closely at it. “This comes from OW.”
“I figured as much,” Iris said, leaning over to examine the box.
Wood from an arnikcah tree was hard, dark, and rich, with a natural luster that shimmered when polished. Easy to spot by its rich burgundy tones, the color rested somewhere between mahogany and cherry.
The box was fastened by a silver hinge, and I flipped it open, gently raising the lid. A small peridot cabochon, inset on the underside of the lid, flashed as the sound of tinkling notes fluttered out. Not panpipes, but a silver flute, sounding the song of woodland birds at the close of sunset.