Page 45 of Kiss of Smoke

Like…like she’d been out and about only moments prior to me.

Jack’s lips flattened, and he finally nodded. “Yes. I believe so.”

I took a shuddering breath as the doorbell rang. Robin excused himself, and what felt like seconds later he’d brought a new Gentry Fae into the room.

This agent wore black from head to toe, his silver hair cropped close, and several scars slashed across his handsome face. He wore a badge I didn’t recognize, and looked me over with cool gray eyes.

“These are for you,” Gwyn said, holding out a handful of the artifacts. “It’d be great if you could try them out in the other room, our girlfriend is having a crisis right now.”

At any other time, I’d be annoyed about that, especially in front of a special agent, but my brain kept repeating…Carabosse?

Impossible. Anyone but her.

“Special Agent Grayfog and his team will be coming with us,” Robin said, taking my hand and sliding another ring on next to the moonstone one. “We’re going to have to search her house. Are you with me, Agent Appletree?”

I blinked, the title taking me out of my distant reverie, and looked up at Robin.

He was right. Before I was Carabosse’s neighbor, or even friend of a sort, I was an agent and a Fae.

I was no stranger to seeing good people do bad things. Maybe there was a good explanation, and maybe there wasn’t…but there was no time to sit here in denial when she could be wreaking more havoc in Avilion.

I mentally shook myself out of the stupor.

“I’m with you,” I said crisply, plucking a necklace from his hands and fastening it around my neck. “How are we doing this?”

Robin gave us the rundown as Grayfog equipped himself and two other hard-faced Fae.

We would search Carabosse’s house. If we found nothing of value there, we would move to the Undercity, and this time, there would be no coming back out until we’d found them and flushed them out of their hiding places.

I tested my jewelry quickly, discovering that most of them seemed to improve my own powers—the emerald ring on my finger boosted my psychic link to the trees, so deeply that I could hear the faerie fruit bushes out back muttering clearly inside my mind.

The necklace gave me several seconds of invisibility, although that seemed rather redundant next to my shadow-spinning ring.

Then Robin opened the armory. I patted my thigh sheath, ensuring Gwyn’s knife was still in place, but I wasn’t above having a pistol holster in my jacket.

Jack had to steer Gwyn away from the rocket launcher.

“We’re going to be in tunnels,” he said exasperatedly. “Do you want to bring the place down onus?”

Gwyn stared at the rocket launcher with hungry eyes. “…Maybe.”

In the end, he took a rifle, and the other Fae loaded themselves down with guns. We used specialized ammo that was embedded with bits of cold iron, to cut through any enchantments the Souls might be using with their stolen Fae artifacts.

Before we left Robin’s house, I stopped in the kitchen and scratched Beans behind his ears.

The cat sìth looked up at me with wide eyes, his whiskers tickling my palm, and my brain returned for a moment to the same single track it had been on before.

How could a woman with a fairy cat for a companion possibly be the Ghosthand?

She’d adored Beans. She’d even left him in the care of a dryad so he wouldn’t be taken out of Avilion or left homeless.

None of it aligned with what I knew of her.

I found myself hoping we’d be wrong as we silently got into cars in Robin’s garage. I got in the passenger seat of Robin’s sportscar, with Robin driving and Jack behind me.

Grayfog took another of Robin’s cars, and Gwyn revved his motorcycle next to us. Ceri had gotten up from the rug in the living room and was at his side, ready to race into the sky alongside him.

We went screaming through the mirror-like portal and onto the highway, heading for Mothwing Falls. I swallowed hard, a bitter taste filling my mouth as the ramshackle, artistic buildings of Mothwing climbed steadily into view.

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