Faerie Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Changeling Chronicles Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

I admitted, not wanting to go into specifics. There was still a chance Swanson had imagined the changeling part. Funny how those legends stuck around, when the last changeling case was so many years ago. I’d told Isabel the bare bones of what had happened—just enough that she didn’t question my eccentricities. Though she’d been a kid when her kind came out of hiding in the aftermath of the Sidhes’ arrival, she’d never seen one of them. They hid themselves well. Unless they wanted you to see them. Creepy fuckers.
    “Tricky how?”
    “Missing kid, suspected faerie involvement,” I said. “The mages refused to help, so I couldn’t say no.”
    “Missing kid?” She studied me in such the way she always did when I brought up the missing child cases I’d been involved in. I tried not to give too much away, but there were only so many conclusions she could draw from my interest in those particular cases. She knew I was an orphan, but not the details. When it comes to my past, ‘complicated’ is an understatement.
    “Yeah.” I always, without fail, took those cases. Even if the outcome was the worst. “We’ll need a detection charm, I think. But there might be complications. I need to visit the Swansons’ house first. Just in case he’s mistaken his own kid for an evil faerie. It can happen.”
    Isabel gave me one of her you’re bullshitting me looks, but went over to the coffee table. “You gave him an iron spell?”
    “Had to, really. He doesn’t know about faerie wards. The mages left him in the dark.” Or one guy in particular. I shoved away the image of the lethal blade appearing from nowhere. Whatever the Mage Lord had been doing in this part of town, I’d probably never see him again.
    “I’ll prepare the base for the spell.” Isabel cleared a space on the coffee table. “I’ve always wanted to try this one again.”
    “You’re the best, you know that?” She didn’t charge me for spells, even the complicated ones. I’d have hired her as my assistant if she’d wanted the job, but after seven years being flatmates, I’d given up trying to offer her money. Her argument was that she enjoyed what she did.
    I wouldn’t say I enjoyed my job most of the time, but my skillset doesn’t leave many options open. Since I came back home, mundane jobs have felt as out of reach as the world before the faeries came. My CV consists of survival and stabbing things. I didn’t play nicely in a team, and had got fired from the one bar job I’d had after an argument with a half-faerie got out of hand.
    It was a wonder I’d even found a flatmate. I put in my ad, “Requirements: a high tolerance for weirdness. No music, loud or otherwise. Faerie-proof charms required. Again, ABSOLUTELY NO MUSIC OF ANY KIND.” And it worked. Witches needed dead silence to practise their spells, and Isabel accepted my low tolerance for noise as a given. As for the ‘high tolerance for weirdness part’, I’d lucked out. Isabel knew some of my demons, but not all of them.
    I walked into the bathroom to retrieve my clothes, removing the cleansing spell—another rubber-band-shaped device, this one blue—and washing the crumbling remnants down the drain. For a brief moment, the imprint of a swirling vortex of lines hovered above it, a remnant of the potent magic present in faerie blood.
    I’ve learned not to trust my own senses when it comes to the faeries. Leaving the room, I decided to double up on the wards around my room tonight, even if it meant making that piskie hate me for the next week. I prefer to keep my demons caged.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    The following morning started with a blissful five minutes imagining I’d actually get to lie in on a Sunday, before a shrill noise brought me crashing back to reality. Groaning, I rolled over and picked up my phone. It was an old touchscreen model I’d bought second hand and had a jagged cut down the screen, but it