The Changeling's Ghost (Thirteen Gates #1)

The Deep Fields

     Sheryl takes one of the few blue days since Asher's injury and casts it in all gray. The townspeople are polite with her, if less than friendly, and when we stop to buy a cigarette at the convenience store the cashier pushes her change over with weariness glinting in the depths of his dark eyes. Sheryl stares down at him and takes the coins with her painted fingertips, the sound a painful scrawl as she drags them back towards her.
  
     "Can we... can we go now?" I ask.
   
     Sheryl obliges.
   
     Her heel clicks match the noise of my wheelies hitting the pavement creases again and again. Her shoes sound like hitting teeth with a small pick and my wheelies sound like someone swallowing the earth in long, slow gulps. We find the first gate after what seems like an entire town's worth of suspicious alleys, all of which are just quick diversions from the main street. Sheryl opens the door and leads us into the first gate without words. We don't bother with small talk on missions, not usually, unless I provoke it.
   
     I've been less chatty lately.
We've both noticed. I get everything out of a quick raise of Sheryl's brow and a purse of her apple-red lips.

     "This is the part where you start nagging me about how I'm failing to live up to my status as a gatekeeper, right?" I say.
  
     "If I've failed to impart any lesson thoroughly enough to get it stuck in your skull like a glass shard, I'd be happy to tuck it back in," Sheryl says, curtly.
   
     The air is full of fae dust, some of which is from gnome- and sylph- aligned plant spirits, which has some unfortunate implications that I try not to think about as I blow it out of my nose. I used to have asthma when I was little. Asher would get a kick out of that. Nah. Focus. There's a pixie in the bush over there, just in sniping distance if I had my silver gun on me. Two major spirits in the area, evidenced by the patterns in which the fae dust is falling, as if blown about by invisible currents. There's a brightness, formless and dull, in the bushes, watching us walk through the tree that forms the second gate at the moment. As we descend layers, I keep sensing it, jerking my head towards Sheryl.
   
     Sheryl's head inclines so slightly it might be missed. Her eyes tilt like marbles on an uneven surface towards my integral, which I have active.
   
     "We're cutting deep," she tells me as she enters gate six. I hold up an arm in front of me, which emits a faint blue light that rises from me in globs, like a lava lamp. Sheryl is streaked gray, and next to nothing rises off her. "Someday you'll know how to control it, and they'll take nothing from you."
   
     "And I can stay here longer?" I ask.
 
    "Not that you should," she says, her voice sounding as if underwater.
   
     The area around the sixth gate is more ornate than the previous, due to its longstanding location. We emerge in a shrine like the one Asher first showed me, with stones stacked everywhere. These have marks scrawled in them, tallies, and several of the piles are knocked over or scorched. More alarming, there are gun wounds in a nearby tree, which bleeds amber like a person might bleed. No fae would have the kind of weapons to do this, but a lost human might. Did Bain get up this far? Nah, she would have been a wraith in a manner of minutes.
   
     Her blank eye stares up into my own as it peeks out of my memory.
   
     We haven't walked far when Sheryl whispers, her voice a sizzling hiss on the open air, "Smoke. It's her."
   
     Smoke doesn't behave the same way at high levels. Spirits are born and dissipate in the mist, reaching out with tendrils for hands, all of them cackling with the same noise an open blaze would make. In fact, at this point, everything is alive, and the whole world is sizing us up like we'd be an excellent garnish for their next meal of energy. All of the spirits, from the smallest dragonfly-esque fae to gnomes laughing harshly in the brush, are watching us, seeing what the trapped humans will do.
   
     A bird soars over us and its wings erupt with rain, causing the smoke to recoil and die out in the high grass. A torrent of wildflowers grow up like a prison around us, and I see fae stalking towards us, their legs too slender to be human. At their front is a man with the head of the fox, dressed in fine attire. Sheryl's integral, a pistol, manifests in her hand as it uncurls from its ring form, but neither that nor my nunchucks are going to do anything against eight foot tall daisies.
   
     The man claps, and Sheryl lets a few rounds fly. He catches a bullet in his hand and it blooms into a strange gray flower whose petals are sharp as holly leaves, fringed at the edges. He smiles to her, exposing rows of teeth closer to a shark's than a fox's. His pupils close sideways, a thin membrane drawing across them as he blinks. "Oh, you're cute," he says.

     "Those are fae iron bullets," I gasp.
   
     Sheryl looks at me with hawk's eyes.
   
     "Oh, you're cute. Astute observation from the strange-smelling human," The high fae moves forwards to draw a finger across my chin. I swing my nunchucks up and his skin sizzles where it hits. He jerks his hand back, "but what a bite! Fearful jaws on this one. I wouldn't risk such misbehavior, lest you trigger the wrath of my own teeth. As you can see I have a set of chompers myself, don't I?" He bites down to demonstrate. I've seen real sharks, as well as shark spirits, and he doesn't compare.
  
     "What business do you have with us?" asks Sheryl.
  
     "Don't be so forward. I've hardly introduced myself. My name is Reynardine," he says, and more quietly, "And you are?"
   
     Sheryl and I stand in equal, steely silence. As he waits for our response, his alien eyes squinting, Sheryl continues, "If you don't release us you will suffer the wrath of the global council of Gatekeepers. They will lay this forest bare up to the thirteenth gate."
 
     "And you're so pretty, and yet your mouth is so, so crude. They made no interference when two young gatekeepers went missing a few months back. Oh no... don't tell me you're the interference? I'm frightened," teases Reynardine.
  
     "There is a will-o-wisp in this area we are hunting. Let us go so that we may pursue it or well be forced to take further action," warns Sheryl. Her gun is still by her side, and yet there are beastlike fae creeping in from every corner, and they have fur and feathers ruffles, shying back as they see the glint of our integrals.
  
     "I'd imagine we can handle a little will-o-wisp, salamander snot that they are," purrs Reynardine. "Maybe your council will thank us in your stead."
  
     "You're underestimating her," Sheryl warns. "This is a creature born of human spite."
   
    As if to demonstrate, the entire field lights on fire. It's as if someone's poured kerosene on all the grass, and the small, dark bird flying overhead can barely put the rising sparks out as stalks go up with a mournful wail. I see a figure arise from the flames, twirling into the form of a human woman made of fire, just abstract enough that her body is little more than a plume of flame. Her hair flares in a magnificent halo around her and two eyes bright as the sun fix us both.