“He did it himself.”
I shot him the evil eye. Okay, now I knew he was trying to make me look bad.
I grabbed a couple of bottles from the small space, shut the door and carefully replaced the carpet runner. “I didn’t know we had a smugglers’ hole,” Claire said, following me down the hall.
“There are hidden compartments all over the place. I think your uncle used them for storage.”
Claire’s late uncle Pip had been a bootlegger, and a highly successful one, at that. He’d purchased the place when the captain died and quickly realized he’d hit the jackpot. Two ley lines—the rivers of power generated when worlds collide on a metaphysical level—crossed directly underneath the foundation. The result was a rare commodity known as a ley- line sink, which generated enormous magical power.
It was the equivalent of free electricity for life. Only instead of lamps and refrigerators, he’d used it to power wards and portals, including a highly illegal portal to Faerie. It allowed him to bypass the heavily regulated—and heavily taxed—interworld trade system. And not any old trade either. He’d gone straight for the gold and started trafficking in the volatile substance known as fey wine.
The magical community’s police force didn’t catch on because he didn’t use any of the official portals. The fey didn’t pay him much attention because he wasn’t purchasing the wine directly, just the ingredients, and probably from many different sources. Once he had them in hand, he’d set up a still in the basement and started making magic.
“But why do you need it?” Claire asked. “There’s plenty of cabinet space.”
I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Have you ever seen trolls drink?”
She laughed, and suddenly she looked like Claire—the real one, not this pursed- lipped stranger. “They don’t show up too often at court!”
“Well, if they ever do, hide the liquor.” I bumped the back door open with a hip and stepped out into the sound of crickets and the smell of impending rain.
I paused to scan the yard, because I am not prone to hallucinations. But the only thing out of the ordinary was the weather. In the square of sky visible above the trees that bordered the right side and back of the yard, clouds hung low and ominous, seeming to glow from the inside. And above the neighbor’s privacy fence on the left, near the horizon, a sheet of gray rain wavered in the wind like a billowing curtain.
“What is it?” Claire was peering into the darkness with me. Red curls whipped around her face, blowing across the lenses of the pair of glasses she’d dug up somewhere.
“You still need those things even though…” I made a gesture that encompassed the whole thing in the hall.
She shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes. In this form, anyway. My other… Well, it actually sees better at night.”
I usually did, too, but it wasn’t helping right now. I leaned through the porch railing to look up into the branches of the massive cottonwood. Some of them overhung the porch, but all I saw were rustling leaves. I concentrated on the more sensitive peripheral vision, paying attention to any change in the light, any shifting forms. But the result was the same: nothing.
“What are you looking for?” Claire asked again, a little more forcefully.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“We can go back inside if you think there’s a problem.”
“The wards protect the porch as well as the house. It’s no safer inside.”
“It’s no safer anywhere,” she said bitterly.
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like me.” I paused, listening, but my ears failed me, too. I could hear the wind snapping the tarp we’d put over a hole in the roof, the squeak of the weather vane and the creak of the porch swing’s chains. But nothing else.
Claire hugged her arms around herself. “You scare me sometimes.”
“This from the woman who just handed me my ass in there.”
“I didn’t mean I’m afraid of you,” she said impatiently. “I’m afraid for you. You look like you’re planning to take on an army all by yourself.”
“Are you expecting one?”
“Not yet,” she muttered.
“Well, that’s something.” I decided to let the wards do their job and concentrated on setting up the porch for civilized living.
It had been furnished more with comfort in mind than style. An old porch swing, with flaking white paint and rusty chains, sat on the left. A sagging love seat that Claire had brought with her from her old apartment, and which the house wouldn’t permit past the front door, sat on the right. And a potting bench nestled up against the back of the house, next to the door.
I put the bottles and glasses on the bench and went back for the takeout. I returned to find Claire frowning at a small blue bottle and the boys hunched over a chess set my roommates had left out. They were sprawled on their stomachs near the stairs, happily watching the tiny pieces beat the crap out of one another.