Once Upon a Quest Read online

  I edged closer to the bulk of the food cart. Four long strides separated me from the door. Safety. What were the chances it was still unlocked?

  I bolted for the food cart.

  He moved at the same time, a blur of motion against the dark landscape. He reached the door before me and blocked my way. Up close, he was just a man even if he was too tall and too skinny in a way that seemed wrong. He smelled of spoiled melon and garlic, sour sweat, and stale tobacco. I gagged.

  He leaned toward me. “We do not wish you harm. Cooperation is the way.”

  “I’d prefer you leave me alone.”

  “We can help you discover—”

  “Discover this, asshole.” I shoved off from the balls of my feet and plowed the heel of my hand into his bony solar plexus. He rocked backward and stumbled, arms awkward and flailing like a stick figure come to life. As he fell, I caught a glimpse of flat, colorless eyes. A rage-filled roar echoed, but I was already running.

  I covered the south quadrant of the park like a beast and blew under the ornate iron arch marking the entrance just as a battered Ford I recognized slowed for a red light on the cross street. “Eddie!” I waved both hands and jumped up and down like a demented cheerleader.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he shouted through the open car window.

  I stood on the cracked sidewalk under a hissing street lamp, rocking from one foot to the other and waiting for the light to change. Every ten seconds I checked over my shoulder to see if the creep had followed.

  When Eddie pulled in to the park roadway, I jumped into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. “Drive.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Just drive!”

  He peered at me over the top of his black-framed glasses that were forever sliding down his nose. “Is the world coming to an end and I’m the last to know? That’s how it’s going to happen. I figure I’ll be in my lab and—”

  “Why are we not moving?”

  He raised a hand. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, Stevie, but you look like shit.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Neither the car nor Eddie moved. I needed to remember it was entirely possible he was the most stubborn person on the planet. I sighed. “If you must know, there was this guy who wasn’t a guy.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, yes, he was a guy, but he was a creep. He was hanging around outside the food truck while I was waiting. He scared me. No big deal. Creeps happen.”

  “Holy cow.” Eddie released a low whistle. “The unflappable Stevie Silver is officially freaked out. Be aware I will be noting the date and time of this historic event in my log. You want me to go find him and kick his butt?”

  “I just want you to drive.”

  Eddie Carson was Jack’s best friend.

  He was the geek next door majoring in physics who also studied alchemy and collected grimoires and was determined to fit magick into an E=MC2 universe or die trying. If anyone could do it, it would probably be Eddie. He’d graduated from high school at the age of eleven and was currently working toward his second graduate degree, making me feel like a terminal underachiever since we were each a few months shy of our twenty-second birthdays.

  He was one of a tiny circle of people in the world who knew the secret I shared with Jack. For that reason, I cut Eddie a lot of slack. As well as anyone, he understood the high strangeness that flared up in my life way more often than I wanted.

  Finding a dead boy—rather, a sleeping boy who appeared dead—sealed in a glass box in the middle of the forest was weird by any standard. What shot the weirdness factor off the charts was the part where I opened the box and the boy woke up and rejoined the world. The boy was Jack Tallant. Whether kissing was involved in the process, I will neither confirm nor deny.

  Eddie was one of the good guys. He didn’t deserve me taking out my crappy mood on him. “Thanks for coming to get me. I appreciate it. I was trying to be optimistic, but the chances of Jack actually remembering were pretty slim.”

  “Yeah.” Eddie lowered his head. “No biggie.”

  Eddie executed a jerky three-point turn and pulled back out onto the street, all while running one hand over the sparse stubble on his chin.

  “So, about Jack …” Eddie began.

  “What’s up? He’s okay, right?”

  Silence followed while my stomach clenched. We reached the stoplight at Main and Elm and Eddie turned left, following a sign for Pike Road.

  The singular reason to turn left was to head out to the Acadia Falls Advanced Research institute, otherwise known as AFAR. It was located a few miles outside the city limits and had a reputation for working on secretive, futuristic stuff—energy, weapons, military technology—that wouldn’t see daylight for twenty years. It also had a public side, which was a lot less conventional and more accessible. Tourist brochures billed AFAR as a place “where rational thought and magic never fought a duel to the death, where witches and alchemists work side-by-side with scientists and engineers.”

  “Care to clue me in where we’re going?” Even though I knew, I wanted to hear him say it. Or maybe I was holding faint hope I was wrong. The brain trust at AFAR, scientific and magickal alike had been itching to get their hands on Jack. I’d made it my mission in life to make sure that didn’t happen.

  After a few beats, Eddie’s words came out in a rush. “Jack had me take him to the institute tonight.”

  “No! Tell me you didn’t do that.”

  His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “Before you call me a traitor—”

  “Oh, I’m already calling you way worse things than that in my mind.”

  Without turning his head, Eddie kept cutting nervous looks my way. I glared back at him.

  “He asked me to take him, Stevie. If you’d seen him tonight, he looked terrible. He hasn’t been eating or sleeping. You would have realized he was desperate. I didn’t know what else to do and I wasn’t going to stand around while he suffered.” He shrugged. “Jack thought it was worth a shot, and for the record, I do, too.”

  Jack had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks after I brought him out of the forest. Then, inexplicably, his doctors had him transferred to AFAR like it was some kind of rehab hospital instead of a super secret Department of Defense outpost. Over my protests, I might add, not that anyone listened.

  No one at AFAR cared about Jack. To them he was nothing more than another juicy experimental subject. They wanted to know how he’d survived inside a glass box on the forested slopes of the Coastal Range. They wanted to know how and why he’d awakened, where the box had come from, who created it, how it worked, and how Jack got in the box in the first place.

  They’d harassed me too until I’d put a stop to it with my winning ways and charming personality. Jack let them keep going. He wanted answers. Don’t get me wrong I wanted answers also. Was it too much to ask that they value Jack’s well being over their stupid research? If that made me a crazy bitch, I was cool with it.

  What the scientists and fuzzy logic magicians at AFAR didn’t know was that Jack’s return to the world wasn’t complete. Memories, parts of his personality, things he couldn’t name, were missing. What was obvious to anyone who spent any time with him was that he was haunted. Something was eating him up from the inside. He wanted to be whole again. I didn’t blame him. I wanted it for him, too.

  But there was one question I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to: by waking Jack, had I saved him or doomed him?

  * * *

  It was past midnight and the moon was rising over the tree line when Eddie dropped me off at AFAR. I headed for the employee entrance because I’d used it most of the time back during Jack’s earlier incarceration. Fingers crossed the guard would be someone who remembered me.

  I stopped in front of the door, wishing I’d had time for a shower and a change of clothes. I lifted my hand to push the buzzer when I felt a strange sensation.

  Icy shivers ran up my spine a
nd then back down. Every spidey sense in my body went on high alert along with the sure sense I was being watched.

  I turned, quickly scanning the expanse of cut grass, a low hedge, the scattering of cars in the parking lot without spotting anyone. No movement. There were plenty of security lamps at intervals, including several illuminating the side of the building where I was standing. A person could be hiding behind one of the employee vehicles, I supposed. It wasn’t likely that the creep from the park could have followed.

  “I’m losing it,” I muttered and turned around, lifting my hand to push the entrance buzzer.

  “Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  I whirled. A man stood where I was dead certain there’d been no one two seconds earlier. He was tall, at least six-three or maybe more, with football player shoulders and close-cropped dark hair. His hands hung loose and relaxed at his sides.

  “Wouldn’t do what?”

  “Hit the buzzer. They might not be as understanding this time around.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t leave me alone—”

  He surged past me and hit the button.

  The door swung open.

  I zipped inside. He strolled through behind me.

  Damn.

  I hurried toward the security desk. The guy behind it looked vaguely familiar. Red hair, freckles, pale skin, pudgy build. Finally, “Kyle, there’s this guy who—”

  Kyle totally ignored me. A big grin spread over his face. “JD, my man.”

  My man? They fist bumped.

  Kyle leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “What’re you doing out so late? Didn’t expect to see you.”

  “No rest for the wicked.” JD leaned one elbow on the raised counter and regarded me with a smirk I wanted to wipe off his face.

  I wasn’t giving up on Kyle. “You probably know about Jack …”

  “Yeah, bummer.” Kyle frowned and picked up his tablet, thumbed through a few screens, then looked back at me sheepishly. “Sorry Stevie, looks like you’re not on the list.”

  JD rested a big hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. She’s with me.”

  “Good to know.” Kyle referred to his tablet again. “I don’t see her name there, either.”

  “Probably because she’s new. She’s completely untrained. We don’t let her out on her own. Fun fact—we’re doing a training thing right now. While I can’t go into the particulars, Kyle, I want you to know you’ve been a big help.”

  Under the praise, Kyle beamed. I threw up a little in my mouth.

  The desk phone dinged and Kyle answered, said yes a few times, and then hung up. “Look JD, I’ve got to leave for a second. Can I trust you to not let her through the doors? The suits will have my head if they find her on the floor.”

  Furious, it took every ounce of control to keep my voice calm. “I’m here to make sure Jack’s all right. What do they think I’m going to do? Kick puppies?”

  Kyle’s expression didn’t change.

  JD ignored me. “No worries. Go do what you’ve got to do. I promise I’ll keep her in line.”

  When the automatic gray doors closed behind Kyle, the last remnant of my calm shriveled and died.

  “Training? Seriously, training? I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing or how you managed to get poor Kyle on your side, but it’s over. I’m done.” I turned to leave, but JD blocked me with his body.

  He gestured at a cluster of blue vinyl-covered chairs lined against the wall in an alcove across from the security desk. “It’s late and I’m tired. Mind if we do this sitting down?” I didn’t budge. “Suit yourself, but I’m taking a load off. Join me if you want or leave. I wouldn’t recommend leaving if you’ll be on foot, which you will because you’re completely alone.”

  “Thanks for pointing out the obvious.”

  “Your friend from the park will track you here, sooner or later. I’m betting on sooner. He’s persistent, dumb as a rock, but persistent.” He lowered himself into a chair and propped his long legs on a spindly coffee table that didn’t look as if it could bear the weight.

  Curiosity and a slow burn of anger were the only things that made my feet move. In the alcove, I sat so there was an empty chair separating me from JD and nothing blocked my path of escape. “What do you know about the guy in the park?”

  “For starters, he’s not a guy. He may have been born human originally, but he’s way past that now.”

  “So what is he?” I remembered the creep’s smell and a wave of nausea flipped my stomach.

  “I’m not Google or Wikipedia.”

  “Then why bring him up? What are you doing here? Don’t think I’m buying that lame story about training.” I folded my arms.

  “Because this is training if you want it to be.”

  I frowned. “Training for what?”

  “A job.”

  “I didn’t apply for a job.”

  JD arched a brow. “You might think you didn’t apply. I would argue you did, but failed to realize what you were doing. That’s part of the problem. If we’re going to talk about all the things you do but don’t realize you’re doing, we’ll be here all night, and like I said before, I’m tired.”

  “What job?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Yet.”

  “How is this about a job and yet you can’t tell me about the job? Why bring up the guy in the park and then say you can’t talk about him?” I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Obtuse standing in for the Mad Hatter.

  “There are things I can tell you and things I can’t tell you. There are rules in my world. I follow them. Sometimes, I bend the rules. Tonight is all about bending.”

  “A hint or two would be nice.”

  “You should ask me who I work for.”

  “That’s obvious.” I waved a hand in the direction of the double gray doors that led from the lobby into the bowels of the institute. “Kyle has you on his list. You work for the evil geniuses.”

  “AFAR?” He snorted. “Try again.”

  “What is this? Do I get three wishes?”

  Slowly, and with exaggerated patience. “Ask me who I work for.”

  “Fine. Who do you work for?”

  “Vale Hallowell.”

  I blinked, temporarily at a loss for words. “Vale Hallowell? Really?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s … a legend. I’m not even sure she’s real.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her you said that.”

  My eyebrows sailed upward. “Oh, no. Oh, please don’t tell her.”

  “No, she’ll like it. Maybe even think it’s funny.”

  My heart beat faster and the world narrowed to JD and this tiny alcove. Vale Hallowell. Holy shit. How could this be true? I’d spent my teens hearing stories about her. Hours when I should have been studying were spent fact-checking stories of her exploits I’d learned in a special studies class I took my junior year.

  “You don’t know Vale Hallowell. Its just part of your game, whatever that is.”

  He sat up, dropped his feet to the floor, and leveled me with an intense stare. “This is not a game. If it was, you can bet I’d be having a lot more fun than I am right now. Your name is Stephanie Ann Silver. Unlike most people who get a name, any kind of name, at birth, you were named at the age of twelve by a social worker who was a Fleetwood Mac fan. At first, she was going to name you Rhiannon and later changed her mind. I say it happened when you were twelve because that’s the age estimate recorded in your medical file by the doctors who examined you after hunters found you wandering in the woods. No one knows your true age or what name, if any, you were given at birth because no one, yourself included, knows who you really are.”

  I stared at a blank place on the wall opposite for what felt like a long time.

  “After the story of my discovery went viral, they said my people would appear and someone would claim me. I waited and waited. No one ever sh
owed up. I liked Rhiannon for a name. Not that I had much of a choice. Mrs. Granberry said it was best not to have a witchy name even though she liked the song.”

  “Ironic, huh?”

  “What are you suggesting? That I’m a witch?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. You told me. You told me by your reaction when I said Vale Hallowell. She’s not a household name or a reality television star or remotely famous.”

  “So what? Her family lives in Acadia Falls. Everyone knows the Hallowell family. Most of the kids I went to school with wanted to be her or date her. That class I mentioned was taught by her aunt Sibyl.”

  “That’s not what I meant by your reaction. Your reaction was something else and one of the things you do that you don’t know you’re doing. Also, the only people who know the Hallowells are witches are other witches, not counting the various magickal types in the area.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Yes, because this isn’t really about a job. Vale needs your help. She asked me to find you, so I did because doing what she asks is my job. I’m glad I got to you first because explaining to Vale how a demon got to you before I did is not a conversation I want to have. Here’s the thing: If you play it right, helping Vale Hallowell out could turn into a job, one of the best jobs on the planet. It doesn’t pay well and the hours are unbelievable, and you’ll be risking your life to benefit people who don’t appreciate what you’re doing or have the slightest understanding of what you face or what’s at stake.” His gaze shifted to the double gray doors.

  “Like the scientists at AFAR?”

  “In part.”

  “What do you do for Vale Hallowell?”

  “I fix things.”

  “Sorry, but you don’t look like a handyman.”

  “Sometimes I kill things, but only if they need killing.”

  “What would I be in this job, theoretically speaking?”

  “You’d be a witch with twenty-first century tools and a license from Castle Manhattan that is recognized by every government on earth and signed by the Archangel Gabriel.”

  * * *

  “Lucy’s all I have left.”