If faeries loved one activity more than they loved enthralling mortals, it was admiring their own reflections.
Elegantly dressed faeries occupied the entire row of mirrors in the Ladies at the nightclub, touching up the glamour on their already-perfect faces. Shifting colours, bright flowers woven into curling hair and glittering wings caught the garish lights above the mirrors, while in the background, a lilting tune played through loudspeakers at top speed, like a modern remix of a traditional faerie ballad.
On another night, I might have come here looking for a good time, not a murderer, but I made a point of preparing for both possibilities. Ducking into a vacant stall, I reached into my bag for an iron dagger and carefully slid it into the sheath on my thigh, hidden under the hem of my dress. Then I threw on a glamour of my own. My blond-tinted hair darkened to black, my face altering imperceptibly. I kept my rounded ears—passing as a regular human would be an asset for once—and trusted the neon lights in the nightclub to hide my magic-tinted eyes and the swirling silver mark on my forehead beneath my newly glamoured curls.
My phone buzzed with a message from my sister—where are you?
Right. I was supposed to be meeting Ilsa at the pub across the road, but the instant I’d heard the lilting music from inside the nightclub, I’d known someone was up to no good. Suppressing a sigh, I turned my phone to silent and left the cubicle.
Nobody noticed I didn’t look like the same person who’d walked in, but glamours were second-nature to the fae. As prey walking among predators, I had to be alert for every small change in my perception, but the fae had the luxury of taking what they saw at face value. A lilac-haired half-faerie with furred fox-like ears looked up, her confused gaze flicking from my glamoured reflection to my rounded human ears, but I was already walking away.
The thrum of the music swallowed me up along with the heaving, sweating crowd. Glamoured half-faeries danced with humans, the latter distinguished by their glazed, vacant expressions. Nobody could say they hadn’t been warned. Every human these days knew not to dance with the fae, but peer pressure was as powerful as the faeries’ ability to play on human desires like a well-strung harp. Even half-faeries weren’t immune to the magic of their Sidhe brethren, though they liked to think they were.
All it took was one promise, one detour into the wrong part of the forest, one dance—and then you were theirs. Forever.
On the stage, DJ Thorntooth cranked up the music to twice its previous speed. The screeching ballad mingling with modern auto-tune created an eardrum-melting combination even by nightclub standards, but I resisted the impulse to buy a round of shots to numb the oncoming headache. I needed to be at my sharpest if I wanted to take down my target without more bloodshed than there needed to be.
As his name suggested, DJ Thorntooth wasn’t human, even if he was wearing the skin of one. Damn unhygienic, if you asked me. Since most people in here were either drunk, stoned, couldn’t see through glamour or just plain didn’t give a crap, they had no idea how much danger they were in. On the plus side, that meant I’d have less panicking to deal with.
The music sped up, and so did the crowd, their movements turning jerky, robotic. They would dance until their screams drowned the sound of the bass and their blood soaked into the beer-drenched floor. I wove through the haze of magic, pretending to be enthralled, while my own magic lurked beneath the surface. It didn’t make me completely immune to the effects of the music, but the green glow at my fingertips helped me focus on what I needed to do.
I inched closer to the stage, creeping up behind the DJ. Then, threads of magic lashed from my hands, yanking him off his feet and onto the filthy floor. His startled cry was lost in the clamour as I aimed my next attack right at the stage. Thorny stems burst from floor to ceiling, cutting off the music with a spluttering crash.
“Show’s over, folks,” I shouted into the microphone. “DJ Thorntooth will be taking a long-term hiatus.”
The DJ wriggled free from my magic and dove off the stage, knocking humans and half-faeries aside like skittles. The bewildered clubbers hindered his escape entirely by accident, allowing me to grab his wrist and drag him towards the back door.
“You can’t have magic!” he yelped. “You’re human.”
I didn’t argue that I wasn’t human, because I was. Instead, I pushed my curls aside with my free hand and let the symbol on my forehead do the talking.
The mark of the Summer Gatekeeper.
He gave an uncomprehending blink. Then the pieces clicked into place. “I wasn’t doing nothing wrong! I’m an innocent bystander!”
“And that human skin you’re wearing just leapt off of its own accord, did it?”
“They planted it on me!” He squirmed, fighting me all the way out of the back door and into the alley behind the nightclub. “I’ll tell on you to the Seelie Queen. She’s a good friend of my mum’s, she is.”
I dropped my voice. “Really? Because I’m in the employ of the Summer Court, and if you’d ever set one foot there in your miserable existence, you’d know the Seelie Queen is currently in jail for treason. And you—” I jabbed him in the chest—“Will soon be joining her.”
“I didn’t do anything!” he shrieked. “You’ll never get away with this.”
I pulled a pair of iron handcuffs from my purse. “Time for a one-way trip to the Ley Line.”
He screamed as the iron made contact with his skin, latching his wrists together. His face turned greyish, his knees giving out as the iron ate away at his magical defences.
“Hazel!” My twin sister’s voice came from the mouth of the alley. “What are you doing? I thought you were supposed to be meeting Morgan and me at the pub.”
“I was.” I gave a sharp tug on the DJ’s wrist, and he whimpered. “Before I got side-tracked by this lowlife human-killer.”
“Ugh.” Ilsa pulled a face at the sight of the DJ’s human-skin coat. “Are you taking him to Faerie?”
“Unfortunately.” Human prisons might have upgraded since the faeries had revealed themselves to the world, but the Sidhe were supposed to be responsible for punishing their wayward kin, even if they made every effort to evade that responsibility most of the time. “I’ll message you when I’m done. This won’t take long.”
“Sometimes I think you go looking for trouble on purpose,” Ilsa said.
“I don’t need to look too hard, do I?” For all that the faeries claimed our realm was a poison to them, they were the ones who’d let their outcasts invade earth and spread chaos and destruction over the past two decades, and since humans were woefully behind on effective methods for dealing with fae criminals, it fell to me to dispense justice in my own way.
I dragged DJ Thorntooth through the cobbled, winding streets until I came to the shimmering line that divided our realm from Faerie. The Ley Line was invisible to most, including the DJ himself, and he gasped in surprise when the cobbled street vanished from sight.
An instant later, we appeared on a country lane outside the Summer Lynn house. Ivy cloaked the walls of the manor, giving it a dark and forbidding appearance without the usual soft sunbeams highlighting the garden’s vibrant colours. The house might be stuck in perpetual summer, like the Seelie Court, but the clocks ran on the same time as the human world outside, and a crescent moon hung in the sky overhead.
DJ Thorntooth eyed the wide gardens, their flowerbeds bursting with night-blooming flowers. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
I gave him a smack on the back of the head. “Shut it.”
I opened the gate and pushed him through into the garden, steering him around the side of the manor towards the black mass of trees towards the back of the lawn. Behind those trees lay the forests of the Winter Court, and the house belonging to the other branch of the Lynn family.
Don’t let the Seelie/Unseelie divide fool you. The Summer Court is as ruthless as Winter, and its inhabitants just as devious. I should know, because I dealt almost exclusively with the little bastards.
I reached the tall, wide gates that marked the end of our garden. Flanked by eternally blooming flowers, the Summer gate was one of the only known passages from the human realm directly into Faerie. Legend told that the gate—and its Winter counterpart—had sprang into existence in the same spot where my ancestor, Thomas Lynn, had crossed into the faerie realm for the first time.
Unlike most humans, he’d walked out again. Some stories said the Sidhe themselves had gifted him with extraordinary powers. Others claimed he’d fled with the Wild Hunt snapping at his heels. Whatever the case, all the versions of the tale I’d heard told me Faerie’s influence had remained, lingering over his shoulder as he re-integrated into the human realm, married his childhood sweetheart, and had children.
That’s when the Sidhe came back. Thomas Lynn, it seemed, had sworn to come to the aid of the Courts whenever they needed him, and the Sidhe had taken him at his word. They’d woven a spell so deep that it filtered through the bloodline of any person born into the Lynn family, choosing one host for each Court with every generation. His twin daughters became the first Gatekeepers: one for Summer, one for Winter. And now, centuries later, it was my turn.
I rapped on the moss-covered bars of the gate, which made a hollow, echoing noise. “One criminal, coming right up.”
The Sidhe had made no secret of their disapproval of my using the gate as a depository for their rule-breaking brethren, but since Mum had been forced into early retirement by an attempted coup in the Summer Court, they’d been in no rush to officially crown me as Gatekeeper. As far as I was concerned, that meant they’d have to deal with any criminals I tossed their way in the meantime.
I pushed the gate inwards, and the DJ made a desperate bid for freedom. Handcuffed hands outstretched, he leapt headfirst into the hedge with surprising agility, vanishing in a shower of leaves.
“Hey!” I ran to the gap between the neat hedges that led into the Inner Garden. The unfortunate DJ flailed upside-down for a moment before crashing into the glowing pool of water in the grove’s centre.
Crap. That’s probably bad luck. The pool contained healing magic from the heart of the Summer Court itself—not that it would be of any use to the DJ when the Sidhe got hold of him. I grabbed his flailing arm and fished him out of the pool, dragging him after me with a firm hand.
“What magic was that?” he spluttered, his hair sopping wet and his skin glistening with droplets of silvery water.
“There’s no point in asking. You’ll be dead in five minutes.” I gave him a sharp kick through the gate, and he landed in a heap beneath his human-skin coat.
“You said I was going to jail!” He scrambled upright, his eyes wide with alarm. “Please—”
I slammed the gate closed, cutting off his pleading. As far as I was concerned, cowardly shits who murdered innocent people deserved no leniency. I turned my back and headed home to get a drink.
Even cast in darkness, the Summer Lynn house was impressive, its ivy-curtained walls resembling a fairy-tale cottage blown up to manor-size. I entered through the back door and conjured up a glass of wine. Whether it came from inside Faerie or was simply a creation of magic, I hadn’t a clue, but with the faeries, it was usually better not to ask.
Light glimmered in the corner of my eye. I lowered my glass and damn near threw it at the person standing in in the darkness like a living statue. The mark on my forehead pulsed with magic, alerting me to the threat. Little too late there.
“Your Gatekeeper’s Trials will begin tomorrow,” the man said, his voice soft and yet precise, layered with the hint of a threat.
My grip tightened on the glass. I could have layered the house in a thousand alarms and tripwire spells and none of them would have kept out a Sidhe messenger from the Summer Court. They owned the place, after all.
“At least turn on the light if you’re going to interrupt my evening,” I said to the intruder.
The house obliged, the kitchen lights flickering on and illuminating a tall, lean faerie, clad in green attire that marked him as a Seelie messenger. His eyes glimmered with a greenish-blue sheen as he ducked his head, allowing locks of pale silver hair to fall over his sculpted cheekbones.
Don’t let their pretty faces fool you. Sidhe magic was designed to draw humans into their orbit and ensnare their senses until by the time the claws came out, it was already too late.
The same curse that bound my family to serve the Sidhe gave me some degree of immunity to their charms, enough to tell me this dude was half-human. Sidhe magic caused human senses to short-circuit from sheer overwhelm and all descriptions to slide through my fingers like sand. Half-Sidhe didn’t have quite the same dazzling effect on the senses, and my annoyance at this rude arsehole who’d broken into my house won out over the primal terror inspired by the sight of an otherworldly visitor.
I propped my free hand on my hip. “You could have come through the gate instead of sneaking in here and lurking around in the dark, you know. I was standing right there.”
Not that it was really a surprise. The Sidhe, as a rule, did not pass up an opportunity to make a dramatic entrance. Besides, I was glad nobody had witnessed the DJ’s attempted escape into the grove. Nobody outside of my family was supposed to know the Inner Garden existed.
“Did you hear me?” he said. “Tomorrow, you’ll be inducted as Gatekeeper.”
I returned his scowl with a smile. “Heard you loud and clear. Might you elaborate on the time? I was hoping to enjoy the rest of this.”
I lifted the wine glass and took a measured sip, gaining some measure of satisfaction out of winding up the dickhead who’d kept me waiting in limbo for months and then decided to wreck what was left of my evening.
A muscle ticked in his jaw, as though he found me as irritating as I found him. To most fae, my very existence was an inconvenience.
“Nine in the morning by your time,” he said. “If you’re late, you will find yourself transported directly into the Summer Court no matter where you happen to be, if you’re thinking of shirking your duty. If you’re asleep, or in the mortal realm, the same rule will apply.”
“Really.” I lowered the glass. “What if I was in the middle of a threesome? Would the other people be transported into Faerie, too? Because that would get kind of awkward for all of us.”
His eyes narrowed. “If you are with another person or persons when the hour strikes, you will all be transported to Faerie. Unlike you, no other humans will be protected against harm. If you would like to begin your Gatekeeper’s training with innocent deaths on your conscience, by all means, do as you like.”
“No need for that,” I said. “I’m impressed you know what a conscience is. I assumed the Sidhe thought it was just another name for a weapon.”
“Is it not just that?” he said. “Feeling pain for others is as damaging as any wound inflicted with a blade and may prove equally fatal.”
“Remind me not to hire you to write me a motivational speech.” I gave him an eye-roll. “Relax. I won’t be late, and I won’t bring any friends. Faerie’s not on anyone’s bucket list as a tourist destination.”
Including mine, for that matter, but I hadn’t exactly had a choice. And now my short-lived freedom had come to an end.
“See to it that you keep your word, human.”
He turned on his heel and left, vanishing into thin air.
“Great to meet you, too,” I said to the space where he’d vanished. Sidhe. For beings who prided themselves on impeccable manners, they seemed to take pleasure in making an exception for me. I didn’t blame Dad for leaving when I was a kid, because being around the Sidhe was a lot to handle when you were human.
I glanced at my half-full glass, tempted to switch it for a bottle, but I needed to be in top shape for my induction. Besides, Mum was going to be thrilled to know one of them had slipped by the house’s defences.
Putting down the glass, I turned off the lights and then crossed the kitchen to the back door. Judging by the steady thumping noise from the shed adjacent to the house, Mum was still up. I’d more or less forced her to build the place after her violent workout sessions kept waking me up in the middle of the night. The joys of living with a retired Gatekeeper with a shit-ton of pent-up rage.
I pushed open the shed door and stepped in, careful to stay out of striking range. Gatekeeper powers or none, Mum could still kick the crap out of me with little effort. Her blond-tinted hair was twisted into a topknot to keep it out her face, her forehead slick with sweat. We shared the same figure—strong and curvy, not skinny or fragile—and expressive eyes. Mine had turned bright green when I’d got my magic, while hers had reverted to their original brown colour after her retirement. Her fists struck the punching bag again and again, as though she was imagining pounding a Sidhe’s pretty face to a pulp.
“I thought you were in Edinburgh,” she said, without turning around.
“A fae was bewitching humans at a nightclub and I had to haul him over to the Court,” I said. “Also, the Sidhe’s messenger showed up in our kitchen. The Trials start tomorrow.”
She dropped her hands. “They came inside the house?”
“Didn’t even knock.” I walked to the punching bag next to hers and gave it a whack with my knuckles. “Guess this is it.”
“I should have checked the date.” She picked up a discarded towel and wiped the sweat from her forehead—unmarked, though she’d once worn the same silver symbol as I did. “I assumed they’d wait until the solstice, but tomorrow’s May the first. Beltane.”
“It is?” I hit the punching bag again, imagining it resembled the face of the half-Sidhe who’d ambushed me in the kitchen. “They couldn’t just show up on a regular Tuesday or whatever, huh.”
The Lynn house sat in a liminal space between the two worlds, but time here matched Earth, not Faerie. Beltane was the first day of summer, though most mortals thought summer began on the solstice in June—a fitting day for the Seelie Court to formalise their claim on me.
“Are you prepared?” Mum said. “You know what this means.”
Did I ever. Once I was Gatekeeper, anonymity would be a thing of the past. No more sneaking around arresting fae criminals without causing a scene. “Sure. I know what to expect from them.”
Her expression softened a little. “I know you do.”
Mum had kept a deliberate emotional distance from myself and my siblings for most of my life. She could never guarantee that she wouldn’t die on the job, or that the Sidhe wouldn’t break their own rules and order us all to be slaughtered. For that reason, we’d never been close, but she and I had bonded over fighting classes and weaponry even before I’d developed my Gatekeeper powers at twelve. Ilsa preferred to bury her head in a book, while Morgan had wanted to spend as little time in the Lynn House as possible. Considering I’d grown up more or less alone with a mother who spent half her life in Faerie, you might be surprised I hadn’t turned out more dysfunctional than I had.
“Guess I should text Ilsa. I just had to wreck her big day.”
“I’ll tell her,” said Mum. “You get some sleep.”
What she wanted to say was I’ll keep you safe. But just because the Sidhe were honour-bound not to harm the Gatekeeper didn’t mean the rest of the Faerie would do the same. Once I stepped foot in the Summer Court, it was on me to stay alive by any means necessary. Mum had told me the initiation tests for new Gatekeepers were different for each of us, just to keep us on our toes. It wasn’t in their interest to fail us, but if we couldn’t cut it in the Trials, we’d never survive out there in Faerie.
My hands curled into fists. By taking on the Gatekeeper’s Trials, I’d ensure the faeries left the rest of my family alone, and I’d protect the humans in my life from being a part of their twisted games. As long as I lived, I would honour that promise.
Whatever I had to do to keep it.
