Page 96 of Faerie Hunted

My questions died on the tip of my tongue before I had a chance to ask. Livvy removed the chain from around her neck and sketched the pattern of a door in the air.

The shimmering outline of it pulsed, real and solid, for an instant before she slid the key into the emptiness. The lock glowed like the inside of a forge before she twisted the key and the air split into two distinct pieces.

Here, it was night. The dying twilight showed the first hint of diamond-bright stars in the clear sky overhead.

But the opening in front of us showed daylight.

It was way too weird, and my first instinct was to tell Livvy to close the door.

When I’d come here the first time, the time of day had matched.

Why did it change now?

My first glimpse of the human world I’d grown up in felt wrong. As though some sort of poisonous gas trickled in from this doorway unnaturally.

I took a step back but Laina rested a soft palm on my forearm. Her smile was calming; it assured me we were going to be fine, as they all said.

Livvy was once again the first one to walk toward the door and she stopped before she stepped through it.

“I have to lock it behind us,” she said by way of an explanation. “To make sure no one accidentally walks through.”

I halfway expected Kenrick Grimaldi’s acidic smile to greet me. Laina took the choice out of my hands and stepped over the glistening threshold. Noren gave me a gentle nudge at the back to get me moving, then huffed out a small lupine growl, likegoodbyefor now.

The first thing I noticed was the heft.

The human world didn’t feel the same as Faerie. The lightness was missing, the sense of energy in the air. This was a dead place. This was a world where the air hung like anchors and wedged itself into the bottom crevices of my lungs.

Livvy locked the door behind us but the last thing I saw before Faerie disappeared was Mike’s head popping out of the entrance of the cave as he came to stand beside Noren. Like he’d somehow find his own way to us.

I swallowed twice but it wasn’t enough to combat the dryness in my mouth.

“We—” I broke off and coughed. Everything felt weird, tasted weird. “We have to wait until night. It’s Friday, right? Uncle Will always heads out to the bar after work on Friday nights.”

Unless the day of the week had also changed on me.

Had time in Faerie somehow gotten ahead of the mortal world, or behind?

Will had his rituals the same way I used to. Even before I began to intern at his law firm, I’d abided by the same routines as the other pack members my age. School and social niceties. After classes, there was work, and then dinner.

Sometimes there were parties when connections needed to be strengthened or milestones celebrated.

Like my eighteenth birthday.

The schedule had to be adhered to. Uncle Will was a stickler for those kinds of things. I didn’t know if that would have changed in the time since I’d run away.

I blinked, the landscape coming into clarity although the edges were still a little unfocused.

I’d run away from this place, and the only time I’d come back had been when Kendrick kidnapped me.

What would Uncle Will even say if he saw me now? And we had to break into his house.

My house.

I was gonna be sick.

“We’ll scout around for a place to lay low until then.” Livvy stared determinedly at the asphalt in front of us.

They were dull too, I realized with a start. Both fae women had taken on the muted tones of this world, like the deadness seeped inside their bodies. I no longer saw the points of their ears, and Laina’s hair showed an ordinary sandy shade of blonde rather than dazzling gold.

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