Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4), Gwen Rivers [read full novel .TXT] 📗

She blinks as though I’ve surprised her. As though she hadn’t expected me to be able to lie. I hold my breath for a beat and wait.

“So, who killed them?”

It’s difficult to shrug with my hands secured behind my back, but somehow I manage. “How would I know?”

“And how did your fingerprints come to be all over this?” She reaches into her bag and withdraws my fuzzy heart-shaped diary.

“Brought it to school and I lost it.”

She shakes her head. “Your prints are on the licenses, not just the book.”

I inhale and then do the one thing I swore I’d never do. I throw someone else under the bus. “It belongs to Gretchen Hamill.”

Agent Hanson leans back in her chair. “You’re telling me that Gretchen Hamill is responsible for killing all these people? She’s the one who sent us this package.”

“Look, all I know is that I saw Gretchen with the diary after I lost it. It was in her bag. So, I snatched it out and flipped through it. I thought she was making fake ID’s or something and thought I could get her to set me up with one. I didn’t know she was killing people!” My shriek by the end has a hysterical ring.

Sorry, Gretchen. You’re not going to be able to come back here.

Agent Hanson studies me for a moment. “I don’t believe you. There’s too much oddness about you.”

“I want to talk to my aunt.” Though Addy is MIA, Chloe is still around.

“We can’t find her. Besides, you’re legally an adult.”

“A lawyer then.” I square my shoulders, as though I’m the girl who is going to assert her rights, instead of the tricksy fey who is only buying time.

“Ms. Rutherford, I don’t believe you fully comprehend your situation.” Agent Hanson waves a hand around the room. “This is a secure facility meant to hold creatures like you.”

At her words my blood starts to frost over. “What do you mean, like me?”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Come on now, Nic. You don’t think all the fey activity has gone unnoticed, do you? We know about the Veil and the big tear in it. We know there are creatures that abduct innocent people from their homes, their lives and use them for their own nefarious purposes.”

I swallow hard. They know about it, about all of it. The Veil, the fey, possibly even Underhill.

“What will that baby you’re carrying be able to do?” Agent Hanson eyes my still flat midsection. “Wield fire? Water? Fly? Will it have horns?”

I shake my head. It’s not difficult to fake my overwhelm. Knowing I was being held by mortals who know of the fey is bad enough. But the baby….

I need to get out of here.

“I’m going to be sick,” I breathe.

Hanson is on her feet and thrusting a garbage can in front of my face before the last word escapes. I hurl my guts up, though it is all bile this time. Morning sickness. I have freaking morning sickness.

No. It’s a trick. Aiden and I hadn’t gone all the way. I am not pregnant. Just freaked out.

She curses and then moves to pound to the air-locked door. “Take her back to her cell. Send a medic to run some more tests.”

“What sort of tests?” I gasp.

“We won’t hurt you or whatever it is you are carrying,” Hanson assures me. “We’re too interested to see the result.”

I shiver at her matter of fact tone. It’s a lie. No baby, she’s fucking with my head.

I sit still while the agents unchain me and then shuffle back to my cell. On the third turn, or maybe it’s the fourth, we pass another team perp walking someone else in the opposite direction. It’s a girl, small, with honey brown hair, and blue-gray eyes. Our gazes lock. She looks to be the same age as Jasmine, maybe even younger. Is she fey, too?

We are past them before I can get a word out. Then I passively stand back while I am deposited in my small, dank room.

“The medic will be with you shortly,” the guard on the left says.

“Can’t wait.” I lie back on the cot, pulling my knees up into the fetal position.

I’m not really pregnant. I can’t be. Agent Hanson is playing some sort of game with me.

I trundle through my mental archives, trying to remember the first day of my last period. It’s no use. The time shifts between Underhill and the world around me are too vast. It could have been a few weeks or a few months.

I’m going to hang on to hoax as long as possible.

No matter what year it is, I still feel like a sixteen-year-old girl, not an immortal fey. I’ve lived more than most girls my chronological age could ever imagine, seen more, traveled through the fairy realm. I was within a few heartbeats of killing my own mother and claiming a throne.

Damn it, why didn’t I kill her?

I wonder again where Aiden is. Before my meeting with Agent Hanson, I’d thought our reunion would be peaceful and sweet. Now, panic fills me as I imagine his reaction.

Especially if I am knocked up.

In my past life, I had also carried Aiden’s child. A child he hadn’t really wanted. A child I’d planned to use to take my place on the Shadow Throne so I would be free to ride with the Wild Hunt.

“How the mighty have fallen,” a sibilant voice hisses from the dark.

I glance up to see the hideous shade lurking in the corner. “Nightweaver.” I should have known the ghost would still be skulking around. I try to keep my lips from moving too much and displaying my conversation for Agent Hanson and company.

The dead Valkyrie drifts over to the camera. She tilts her birdlike head to one side and then I see the red light go off.

“Nahini? Did she get free?” Last I’d seen of my second in command, she had been caged in the great room of the