Page 70 of Mortal Shift
“Good to see you, too, Aodh,” Cole said with a wry smile. “Business is good, I see.”
“Can’t complain,” he said, and then his eyes tracked to me. “Who’s your friend? She looks human. Perhaps she’d like to try my ale, and a slice of the pie.”
“This is my mate,” Cole said firmly, and Aodh’s expression fell.
“No offence intended,” he said, holding up his hands. “She’s in no danger, of course.”
“Um, what would have happened if I’d tried the ale and pie?” I asked tentatively.
“You don’t want to know,” Cole said darkly, and I decided he was probably right. He turned his attention back to Aodh. “We need a portal to my packlands.”
“Ah, you do, do you?” Aodh rubbed his hands together, a gleeful, greedy expression gleaming in his eyes. “It’s the festive season, you know. And late.”
“I’ll pay the usual price,” Cole said, pulling what looked like a pair of tiny crystals from his pocket.
“Fine, fine,” Aodh grumbled, snatching up the crystals and holding them up to the dim light before grunting in apparent satisfaction and thrusting them into his pocket. “This way, then, don’t crowd the door.”
He led us into the center of the room and shoved a table aside. The people eating and drinking didn’t react in the slightest, not even to look our way.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.
“Nothin’ for you to worry your pretty head about, sweethe—” Cole glared at the innkeep and he cut off mid-word.
“You can’t help them,” Cole said curtly.
“They tried the ale, didn’t they?”
Both supernaturals ignored me and I made a mental note to never,everaccept Aodh’s hospitality.
Aodh raised one hand and started muttering some kind of incantation in a language I didn’t recognize. And then a portal sprang into the air in front of his outstretched palm. Through it, I could make out a dark street that could have belonged anywhere in the entire country, but Cole nodded in satisfaction.
“Always a pleasure,” he grunted.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” the innkeeper replied, one hand patting the pocket where the crystals were stowed.
“Tha—” I started, but Cole slapped one hand over my mouth, cutting me off, and filling me with the overwhelming urge to bite clean through his palm. Aodh merely chuckled, and around us, the oblivious humans carried on eating and drinking.
“What the hell?” I snapped when Cole removed his hand—intact, but only because I didn’t want to get blood all over this hoody. It was the only one I had.
“Never thank a fae,” he said. “It implies a debt.”
“Right,” I said, my cheeks coloring. I knew that, we’d covered it in class on one of our first days here. A debt owed was a debt that could be called in, with no limitations if they hadn’t first been set. I glanced around me again, filled with a sinking suspicion about how the inn’s patrons would be paying for their meals.
“If you want the portal held open any longer, it’ll be extra,” the innkeeper said, irritation layering his tone. Whether he was annoyed that we were so openly discussing his deviousness, or just that his attempt had failed, I wasn’t entirely sure, but Cole just nodded to the portal.
“After you,” he said.
“What, don’t you trust me?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “I’m wounded.”
“That can be arranged,” he muttered under his breath, and then, “Last chance—go through, or back to Darkveil, your choice.”
Which wasn’t much of a choice, truth be told. My mom was somewhere on the other side of that portal, and granted I was no closer to having a clue how to spring her than I had been when Cole hopped over the wall, but I knew one thing: I wasn’t going to be saving her from this side of the portal.
Sucking in a deep breath, I stretched out a tentative hand to the portal, my fingertips skimming the air just in front of it. When Zane had brought me to Darkveil, I’d been too freaked out to pay much attention to the way we’d traveled. Not to mention the whole compulsion thing he’d had going on. But I was pretty sure it hadn’t been a portal. We’d just kind of…splintered, and ended up at the academy. Now I was acting under my own volition, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Did I just step through, or was there some way I had to approach it? Was it like stepping through a doorway, or did I have to be thinking about where I wanted to go? Did I need to go through quickly, all at once, or—
Movement flashed in my periphery, but before I could turn, a palm landed between my shoulder blades and thrust me forward, and I stumbled straight through the portal. The inn vanished around me, replaced by the cool night air of the deserted street I’d seen through the portal’s surface. I whirled round as Cole’s feet touched the ground, and no sooner had they than the portal vanished behind him.
“You pushed me through,” I accused. He shrugged unrepentantly.
