Crime Spells

She took the winding staircase one ache at a time to the PI offices on the second floor. What the heat failed to do downstairs, it made up here in spades. She took her coat off.

Mike stood in the doorway of suite 201-B, his flattop full and bristly as it had been when they’d met; he’d worn his hair like that all his life. He wore a plain t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. His neighbors dressed up in leather now, used it like a billboard to advertise how tough they were. Mike didn’t need all that to look tough. The lines around his eyes and mouth said it all.

His office held a beat-up metal desk with a veneer top and chairs. Nothing on the walls. He liked to keep the important things out of sight.

He settled down in his chair and offered her one, but she perched on the desk. She felt too on edge to get comfortable.

One look at the mirror and he pronounced her screwed.

“It’s a Faery glass,” he said, careful not to gaze into it straight on.

“I thought it was harmless. And rare.”

He leaned back, turned the mirror face-down on his thigh. “Oh, they’re rare all right. Anyone in the human world looks in one, they can see straight through to Faery. Anyone in the Faery realm can do the same thing-see all the way through to this world. These things are more windows than mirrors.

“And they don’t just pass hand-to-hand around the city by accident,” he said. “Once they’re given to a person, they belong to that person and can’t be taken away, only regifted. Addie, whoever gave you this did it on purpose.”

“Je

“What do you know about her?”

Addie shrugged. “What do I know about most of my customers?”

“That they’re easy marks. Right.” He ran a fingertip along the edge of the desk where the veneer had peeled. “What’d you see in the glass?”

“I saw my own reflection, but I looked as I did around the time we got married,” she said.

“Something sweet. To get you to take the mirror off Je

Aw, hell.

“What else?”

“I can’t tell you, Mike.”

He nodded. “This is about your contract with the Fae. Same stuff all over again.”

“It is.”

“I haven’t asked you about that since we split up,” he said. “But I’m going to have to ask you about it again. No direct questions.”

She could handle that.

“I know the terms of your contract even if I don’t know everything else. You’ve kept the terms never to tell a soul, no one else can know?”

“Yes. To the letter.”

“Is the thing you saw in the mirror the Fae being you made the bargain with?” he asked.

“No.”

He frowned. “Then the agreement’s broken. Someone else knows.”

Who? The poppet?

That changeling still ought to be indistinguishable from a human being in the human world, all grown up by now. Maybe married, popped out a baby or two of its own, along came the grandkids. As she understood it, the changeling would never discover it wasn’t human. Never leave the human realm.

What had happened to change all that?

“You can tell me now,” Mike said. “Tell me everything. It won’t matter to the Fae if you do.”

It mattered to her. “It’s bad.”

“For me to get you out of this, I need to know, Addie.”

But there was no way out. Fae contracts had no loopholes. You couldn’t run or hide from them. You couldn’t outsmart them. This time she’d spent in Mike’s office-every minute from here on out-would be the only time they had left together.

How could she tell him? She never wanted to see his expression broken and wary, for him to look at her as though he couldn’t decide if she was a monster. Or a stranger. She’d have no right to expect anything different.

More than that, though, she wasn’t the same person who’d done that terrible thing to save herself. Time and experience had worked their own magic on her. She’d changed.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” she said. And she meant it.

He twined his fingers with hers. Squeezed her hand. “I figured you’d say that.”

She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at the love in his. His determination filled every molecule of air in the room. She could all but hear the wheels turn in his mind.

“If we can find Je

He shoved her coat into her arms. Pulled her out of the office and down the hall.

Whatever he wanted, she’d try to do it. She tried to hope, too. No matter how alien it felt.

Or that it lasted all of ten seconds.

Ingram met them at the second floor landing. “Trouble,” he said.

Red eyes. Black wings, difficult to camouflage under human clothes. At the bottom of the stairs.

She kissed Mike’s cheek.

“Don’t go,” he said.

But of course she had to. She let go of his hand and walked down to meet the Fae with her head held high. She hadn’t cringed since the last time Fred had struck her-all those fifty years ago-and she didn’t intend to start again now.

She glanced back only once, to reassure Mike. But he’d vanished.

“The letter of the agreement has been broken,” the Fae said, in a voice so deep it rattled her bones. “The changeling has discovered what it is, abandoned its human life and its family. It came back to us.”

“How?”

“Politics,” the Fae said. “It was the work of an enemy, exposing this secret. One of my enemies.”

Addie closed her eyes. It was so unfair. This whole mess-the changeling had done nothing to cause it. And it wasn’t Addie’s or Je

She could rail against the unfairness of it, but she’d known the rules when she agreed to them all those years ago. The terms that bound all of them. “So what’s my fate worse than death?”

“You’ll come with me,” the Fae said. That was all. That was enough.

She’d never see Mike again. Never go home again, never see all the treasures on their shelves in her sun-dappled kitchen. There’d be no more unwitting pawn customers to bake cookies for.

The life she’d built on the backs of that little girl she’d switched and her parents would be gone. It was the only life she had.

Well, at least she’d had one. Not everyone did.

The Fae led her out into an afternoon laced with evening. The new sickle moon hung low on the horizon, the sky streaked with orange and pink. The wind tore at her. She shrugged her coat on and pulled it tight across her chest, breathing car exhaust and the salt scent of her own tears.

She saw Mike at the corner of the building. That alien hope flared in her again… and sputtered.

She memorized every angle of him, the rhythm of his gait as he strode over and spoke to the Fae.

“I won’t try to stop you taking her. I came to ask you something.” He didn’t wait for the Fae to respond. “I wanted to know who broke the contract between you and Addie, since she sure as hell didn’t. I’d have searched regardless, after you’d taken Addie away. And I’d have started with a young lady named Je

The Fae looked pointedly at the mirror handle sticking up from Mike’s back pocket.

“You know, I thought it’d take me hours,” Mike said. “It’s a big city. She could’ve been anywhere. But do you know where I found her? She was right here the whole time. Outside, out of view, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. She’s still over there, matter of fact. Why is that?”

“Je

Je