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She sidestepped the man, jumped into the car, closed and locked the door. “Go to the Mirror Club in Raleigh,” she instructed the car.
“Override previous destination?” the polite feminine voice of the car asked.
“Yes, please.”
The man with the curly black hair pursued her and pounded on the cab roof in fury for a few seconds before the car merged with faster traffic, leaving him behind.
Liliana noticed a large backpack in the seat next to her and assumed it was his. She pressed the button to roll down the window and tossed the backpack out the window.
She found it weirdly satisfying to see it hit the street at speed, roll through a big puddle, and smash into a curb, bursting at the seams with clothing and personal items scattering.
On the other hand, she suspected that her actions would have consequences. As the car pulled into the all auto-drive lane on the highway and accelerated to far higher speeds, she checked the vision she’d seen where the Wolfhound faced Colonel Bennet. As she suspected, the future where the assassin showed subservience rather than rage was gone.
Liliana’s recent actions pushed the assassin’s anger level beyond control. She sighed. It had been satisfying, but now, even if she managed to save Pete today, he would die a few nights later.
And even if she helped then, he would die within a year protecting Lou Willoughby.
Keeping Peter Teague alive was practically her new hobby.
She sighed again as the beauty of the heavily forested, kudzu-overgrown North Carolina countryside sped past her window. Much of the damage done to the earth by modern technology had been mitigated by the invention of even better, more earth-friendly technology and a shift in attitude that valued the green world rather than disregarded it. But no one had figured out how to get the invasive kudzu under control. It was the sort of problem that a land-bonded Sidhe could fix, but there weren’t any in North America.
Pete faced death today because he was following her advice to talk to Lady Daphne Fairchilde. A few days from now, his death and the death of the Fae prince who protected him at the hands of the Wolfhound had both become certainty rather than possibility because of her cavalier treatment enraging the assassin.
These two possible deaths were both her fault. And while she didn’t know how the incident that involved Lou Willoughby might be her fault, she wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it turned out to be so.
Saving Pete would not be nearly as frequently needed if Liliana didn’t keep unintentionally making his already dangerous life even more dangerous. A Celtic wolf who hunted killers did not need her to make his life harder.
The drive took nearly an hour. She looked for various ways to help but hadn’t yet found one with the outcome she hoped for.
When the cab dropped her off in front of the Mirror Club, it did not request payment. It took Liliana a moment to realize that because she changed the destination while the assassin was still the logged passenger, the machine automatically charged him for the trip.
She chuckled to herself as she stepped out on the sidewalk, but her laughter died as a pedestrian jostled her. This part of Raleigh was far too busy.
Her heart pounded as more and more strangers walked past, too close.
She looked around frantically, then stepped into a sheltered alcove beside the nearest building to catch her breath. The Mirror Club, owned by a woman she hadn’t seen in nearly a century, occupied the building across the street that rose up to an impressive twelve stories.
Lady Daphne Fairchilde, the widow spider, was neither particularly fair nor a child, nor by many definitions was she a lady. Liliana always found it odd when names didn’t match the people who were named.
Now, she faced Lady Daphne’s tall building, noting that only the first two floors were the Mirror Club, one of the most popular nightclubs in Raleigh. The upper floors of the building seemed to be a different business, a hotel with balconies overlooking the street, but Lady Daphne had bragged all those years ago about buying a whole building, one of the tallest in Raleigh at the time, so she must own the hotel as well.
Loud music leaked out of the front door when a muscular woman in a black T-shirt opened it to let people in. The T-shirt said “Mirror” in reflective silver letters, then had the same word beneath it, upside down in gray.
Even this early in the evening, few people came out the doors. Most went in. A lot of people went in. The pounding music drew the Normals to dance and intoxicate themselves until they became easy prey. Liliana suspected the nightclub would draw the more predatory beast-kin and Fae, as well as the often equally predatory humans.
Noisy, crowded places like this were why Liliana no longer went dancing.
Another door led into the hotel lobby, but it had nearly as many people pouring in as the door directly into the nightclub. Inside the hotel lobby, her fourth vision showed her another entrance to the club was also guarded by an athletic woman in a black T-shirt.
In a few minutes, Liliana knew Pete and his friend, Sergeant Giovanni, would enter the building. Neither of them would leave it again unless Liliana changed their paths.
It was her fault. She told Pete he should speak to Lady Daphne.
Liliana huddled in the shadowed doorway of the closed offices glaring at the building filled with noise and people and mad flashing lights as if it were a vicious enemy. She absolutely could not walk through that door. She shuddered with revulsion and something like terror thinking about it.
The spider seer had always hated being stared at. And crowds always stared at her. Worse, in a crowd the short spider-kin was often bumped, touched, jostled, and shoved around. If she tried to force herself to go inside, she would instinctively shut down, go to that blank place in her mind where time passed without her awareness.
That would not help Pete.
