THORN QUEEN

“Fine, fine,” he said, wiping his face. “It’s superficial. What the hell was that?”

“Some monster that a gentry put together with magic. Bound all those animals into one stronger form and ordered it after me.”

“Will it come back together?”

“No. I broke the bonds, and they’re all spreading apart anyway.”

“Um, Eugenie?” Wil’s voice suddenly rang down the stairs. “Is everything okay down there? A deer just ran through the living room….”

Kiyo and I both decided later that it was a good thing Smokey had disbanded like he had. Otherwise, if they’d seen his full form, Trisha and Wil would have had enough Bigfoot material for their forums to last until the next century. Goodness only knew what kind of threads and rumors this event alone would start.

Trisha paid me in cash once we frisked the deer out of the house, and I told her she was on her own for the other animals in the basement. As we were leaving, Wil briefly caught me alone, his goofy, paranoid expression replaced by a much grimmer one. “Have you found Jasmine yet?” he asked in a very soft voice.

I bit my lip. No matter how absurd I thought Wil was, whenever I saw how much Jasmine’s disappearance grieved him, it broke my heart. I’d never told him the truth of her heritage. The only information I’d given him was that she was on the run and hadn’t been kidnapped. I thought he’d take comfort in knowing she wasn’t being held against her will, but it hurt him to think she didn’t want to be with him. He truly loved his sister, no matter how much she despised the human world. It was really quite sad.

“No, I’m sorry. I really am.”

His face fell further, and he gave a weak nod. “Yeah. I figured. I know you’ll keep looking, though. And you’ll let me know if you find her?”

I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Sure.”

The truth was, I didn’t know if I would tell him. It all depended on what state I found her in. If I found her pregnant and bent on conquering the worlds…well, I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do then, but one thing I felt certain of was that there was no way I was ever going to let her return to this world.

Chapter Six

Kiyo always healed quickly, and when we got home that night, he was in fine condition to see who could put on the highest-quality performance in bed. Consequently, he woke in a very cheerful mood the next day, though he still couldn’t help a little grumbling about following along yet again. I knew it was all gruffness, though. He liked knowing I was safe, and that warmed something up inside of me.

“You tricked me,” he remarked once we’d crossed over to the Otherworld that morning. I was hoping these bandits would be as easy to dispatch as the kobolds, u

“Come on,” I said, still feeling a bit proud. “It has nothing to do with that. Don’t you want to see justice served to those who dare torment my subjects?”

“Careful there. People might think you’re acting like a real queen.”

I glanced down at my torn jeans and Poison T-shirt. “Well, let’s not get carried away. Maybe it’d help if I got a crown like Dorian said.”

To my astonishment, Kiyo’s teasing expression immediately hardened. “No. That’s the last thing you should do.”

I stared in surprise. “Why not? Too Miss America?”

“It’ll make you seem more…official.”

I gestured around at the tapestry-draped castle room we’d appeared in. “We’re in a fucking castle, Kiyo. I don’t really see how it can get any more official.”

“You don’t understand. I mean, you’re a queen, yeah, and they all know it…but a lot just see you as this warrior stand-in. Like a regent. Get a crown…start appearing before lots of people in it, and I don’t know. It makes you legitimate. It makes it real. It’ll be harder for you to get out of this than it already is.”

I thought about how often I’d wished I hadn’t been saddled with this land and how often I’d tried to avoid it-yet still kept coming back. “I don’t think it can get any harder.”

We found Shaya before heading out on our raid. I’d brought some things that I hoped would help with the Thorn Land’s drought and famine. When I gave the first one to her, she could only stare in silence for several moments.

“Your majesty…what is this?”

“It’s a children’s place mat I got from Joe’s Tex-Mex restaurant.” Along with Joe’s kid’s menu, the place mat also depicted a map of Arizona that kids could color while waiting for their food. I pointed to the assorted symbols on the map. “See, this shows Arizona’s natural resources. The stuff that grows and can be found there. Cotton. Copper.”

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to something that resembled a glass of liquid.

I frowned. It certainly wasn’t water, that was for damned sure. “I think it’s some kind of citrus product. Orange. Grapefruit.” I shrugged. “I think you can grow either in this weather. And that’s the point. This land mirrors Tucson, so all the things there should be the same here. There should be copper deposits that you guys can find. That’s valuable in trade, right?” Copper was one of the few metals gentry could handle. Iron was right out, being the harbinger of technology. That’s what made it one of my most lethal weapons. “And the rest should grow here, if you can find seeds. Someone must have them somewhere, even in this world.”

“They still need water,” she pointed out.

“Right. That’s what this is for.” I handed her my next prize: a book. “It’s a history of the engineering of wells and aqueducts from ancient and medieval Europe. It should help in moving water around.” She still looked stu

She took the books and flipped through them, taking in the dense chapters and diagrams. “I don’t think I’m the right person to do this. I don’t have the mind for it.”

“Maybe not. But I’m sure you can delegate to someone who can.” I patted her encouragingly on the arm. The truth was, I was as baffled by the book as she was. I could put together jigsaw puzzles in record time. Reading engineering diagrams? Not so much. “Just be careful with them-those are library books.”

I had to go then and felt a little bad about leaving her. Yet, despite her confusion now, I knew she would find people and ways to implement this. She was just that competent. Maybe I should have had more of a hand in this, but hey, I’d been the one who had to choke down Joe’s crap Tex-Mex food in order to score the place mat. That had to count for something.

If I’d had my way, I would have just taken Kiyo and gone out to hunt down these bandits ourselves. I had to imagine they were just riffraff and not much of an obstacle to us. Kiyo was a pretty fierce fighter, as last night had shown, and between my weapons and magic, I was his equal. Rurik had protested this plan, however, insisting that he and almost two dozen guards come along. I didn’t think this gave us much in the way of stealth, but he’d told me we’d dismount and go on foot once we reached the passes the bandits lived in.

Before we left, I decided we might as well add one more person to our entourage. I stepped into a darkened corner, far from the light of candles in the room, and took out my wand. Immediately, the guards moved away from me. They knew what I was going to do and didn’t like it. When something magical made gentry uneasy, you knew it was bad.

I spoke the words of summoning and felt magic move through me. It wasn’t the storm magic I’d inherited, the pull to water and air. This was a learned human magic, a way of reaching out to the worlds beyond. The temperature in the room dropped, a sudden shock compared to the dry heat we’d just been in. Then, the cold lifted, and Volusian stood before me.