Sheryl takes one of the few blue days since Asher's injury and casts it in all gray. The townspeople are polite with her, if less than friendly, and when we stop to buy a cigarette at the convenience store the cashier pushes her change over with weariness glinting in the depths of his dark eyes. Sheryl stares down at him and takes the coins with her painted fingertips, the sound a painful scrawl as she drags them back towards her.
  
     "Can we... can we go now?" I ask.
   
     Sheryl obliges.
   
     Her heel clicks match the noise of my wheelies hitting the pavement creases again and again. Her shoes sound like hitting teeth with a small pick and my wheelies sound like someone swallowing the earth in long, slow gulps. We find the first gate after what seems like an entire town's worth of suspicious alleys, all of which are just quick diversions from the main street. Sheryl opens the door and leads us into the first gate without words. We don't bother with small talk on missions, not usually, unless I provoke it.
   
     I've been less chatty lately.
We've both noticed. I get everything out of a quick raise of Sheryl's brow and a purse of her apple-red lips.

     "This is the part where you start nagging me about how I'm failing to live up to my status as a gatekeeper, right?" I say.
  
     "If I've failed to impart any lesson thoroughly enough to get it stuck in your skull like a glass shard, I'd be happy to tuck it back in," Sheryl says, curtly.
   
     The air is full of fae dust, some of which is from gnome- and sylph- aligned plant spirits, which has some unfortunate implications that I try not to think about as I blow it out of my nose. I used to have asthma when I was little. Asher would get a kick out of that. Nah. Focus. There's a pixie in the bush over there, just in sniping distance if I had my silver gun on me. Two major spirits in the area, evidenced by the patterns in which the fae dust is falling, as if blown about by invisible currents. There's a brightness, formless and dull, in the bushes, watching us walk through the tree that forms the second gate at the moment. As we descend layers, I keep sensing it, jerking my head towards Sheryl.
   
     Sheryl's head inclines so slightly it might be missed. Her eyes tilt like marbles on an uneven surface towards my integral, which I have active.
   
     "We're cutting deep," she tells me as she enters gate six. I hold up an arm in front of me, which emits a faint blue light that rises from me in globs, like a lava lamp. Sheryl is streaked gray, and next to nothing rises off her. "Someday you'll know how to control it, and they'll take nothing from you."
   
     "And I can stay here longer?" I ask.
 
    "Not that you should," she says, her voice sounding as if underwater.
   
     The area around the sixth gate is more ornate than the previous, due to its longstanding location. We emerge in a shrine like the one Asher first showed me, with stones stacked everywhere. These have marks scrawled in them, tallies, and several of the piles are knocked over or scorched. More alarming, there are gun wounds in a nearby tree, which bleeds amber like a person might bleed. No fae would have the kind of weapons to do this, but a lost human might. Did Bain get up this far? Nah, she would have been a wraith in a manner of minutes.
   
     Her blank eye stares up into my own as it peeks out of my memory.
   
     We haven't walked far when Sheryl whispers, her voice a sizzling hiss on the open air, "Smoke. It's her."
   
     Smoke doesn't behave the same way at high levels. Spirits are born and dissipate in the mist, reaching out with tendrils for hands, all of them cackling with the same noise an open blaze would make. In fact, at this point, everything is alive, and the whole world is sizing us up like we'd be an excellent garnish for their next meal of energy. All of the spirits, from the smallest dragonfly-esque fae to gnomes laughing harshly in the brush, are watching us, seeing what the trapped humans will do.
   
     A bird soars over us and its wings erupt with rain, causing the smoke to recoil and die out in the high grass. A torrent of wildflowers grow up like a prison around us, and I see fae stalking towards us, their legs too slender to be human. At their front is a man with the head of the fox, dressed in fine attire. Sheryl's integral, a pistol, manifests in her hand as it uncurls from its ring form, but neither that nor my nunchucks are going to do anything against eight foot tall daisies.
   
     The man claps, and Sheryl lets a few rounds fly. He catches a bullet in his hand and it blooms into a strange gray flower whose petals are sharp as holly leaves, fringed at the edges. He smiles to her, exposing rows of teeth closer to a shark's than a fox's. His pupils close sideways, a thin membrane drawing across them as he blinks. "Oh, you're cute," he says.

     "Those are fae iron bullets," I gasp.
   
     Sheryl looks at me with hawk's eyes.
   
     "Oh, you're cute. Astute observation from the strange-smelling human," The high fae moves forwards to draw a finger across my chin. I swing my nunchucks up and his skin sizzles where it hits. He jerks his hand back, "but what a bite! Fearful jaws on this one. I wouldn't risk such misbehavior, lest you trigger the wrath of my own teeth. As you can see I have a set of chompers myself, don't I?" He bites down to demonstrate. I've seen real sharks, as well as shark spirits, and he doesn't compare.
  
     "What business do you have with us?" asks Sheryl.
  
     "Don't be so forward. I've hardly introduced myself. My name is Reynardine," he says, and more quietly, "And you are?"
   
     Sheryl and I stand in equal, steely silence. As he waits for our response, his alien eyes squinting, Sheryl continues, "If you don't release us you will suffer the wrath of the global council of Gatekeepers. They will lay this forest bare up to the thirteenth gate."
 
     "And you're so pretty, and yet your mouth is so, so crude. They made no interference when two young gatekeepers went missing a few months back. Oh no... don't tell me you're the interference? I'm frightened," teases Reynardine.
  
     "There is a will-o-wisp in this area we are hunting. Let us go so that we may pursue it or well be forced to take further action," warns Sheryl. Her gun is still by her side, and yet there are beastlike fae creeping in from every corner, and they have fur and feathers ruffles, shying back as they see the glint of our integrals.
  
     "I'd imagine we can handle a little will-o-wisp, salamander snot that they are," purrs Reynardine. "Maybe your council will thank us in your stead."
  
     "You're underestimating her," Sheryl warns. "This is a creature born of human spite."
   
    As if to demonstrate, the entire field lights on fire. It's as if someone's poured kerosene on all the grass, and the small, dark bird flying overhead can barely put the rising sparks out as stalks go up with a mournful wail. I see a figure arise from the flames, twirling into the form of a human woman made of fire, just abstract enough that her body is little more than a plume of flame. Her hair flares in a magnificent halo around her and two eyes bright as the sun fix us both.

     "Go on then. Don't embarrass in front of the high-and-mighty council!" Reynardine's entourage begins darting about, some of them towards the fire, others away. "I'd kill for some undines right now."

     "You'd always kill for some undines, boss!" calls one of his agents, in the field.

     Reynardine looks up towards the insubordinate and Sheryl cocks and shoots her pistol. Reynardine turns just in time to take it in the arm, which burns where the bullet passes through, plants growing rapidly out of where the bullet trail was as his body is repaired. He looks at us with a feral fierceness, but Sheryl has already cut through the back using a curved knife, part of a particularly thick Swiss Army knife set she keeps on her person at all times (make no mistake--this thing is twice the size of a regular Swiss Army knife and has enough magically-enhanced functions to deal with everything from escaping prisons to preparing dinner). I follow behind, and Sheryl dashes towards the edge of the field, where the fire is spreading but has not yet penetrated.

     Reynardine dashes towards us on all fours. "Hold him off," Sheryl instructs, and I begin swinging nunchucks, ready for things to, as we Americans say, get real. Reynardine lunges and I knock him with the chukon-bu (for the uninitiated, you might know it as the pain pole) right upside the face. Fae iron burns his face, leaving a long, disfiguring welt, and he lunges again, spitting out blood.

     "You think you can beat me with two stolen sticks?" Reynardine calls.

     "It's not appropriative, it's respectful borrowing!" I yell back.
He ducks the next blow and swings out to the side, still standing on all fours, and when he rears back up I realize he's standing digitigrade. He tears my shirt down the middle with a slash of his claws, and I see spores across my chest, which begin to multiply. I run my integral down them desperately, which seems to kill them off, but it gives him an opening to hold me against the tree. His breath is like hundreds of trees and rancid meat. "Come on, little rabbit. Your little sticks will be a lovely adornment for the antlers of Herne."

     I hit him in the side and his suit burns like skin, becoming grass and then fox fur. While he keels over, I run for Sheryl, slinging aside lesser fae (all in the forms of bipedal beasts, their attire little more than shanty mirages) with quick whips of the nunchucks. I slide towards Sheryl, who is blowing rounds into Greta.

     "She's made of fire," I say, showing off my incredible intellect.

     Sheryl points to a small necklace, just visible through the flames. "It's her integral. It's in the fire."

     At this point, I realize in full what fear really is. The thing before us it's not fae, it's not human, it's nothing but spite. "You're Greta Ertesche?" I call, because I don't believe it. The fire flickers violently, and then a blade of flame slices the air like any metal knife might. The fields burn around us, though we ourselves are unaffected. There's the smallest path between us and her, left damp and untouched. "What do you... what do you want from us?"

     Greta's 'head' inclines in my direction. She has no mouth with which to make noise, but horns emerge from her head, like those of a dryad. No, a changeling. "She's asking for..."

     I'm cut off as the bird flies overhead, raining down on Greta. The deluge grows more intense and she's put out for a second. I dive for her necklace, just as fire engulfs my hand and Greta blazes through the water. Her form is weaker, wavering slightly, and she looks at me with an almost human distress.

     Reynardine is running back our way.

     "Can't we work this out without--" I yell, and realize I'm about to trespass on all my slick shoot-first-talk-later moral principles. Diplomacy has never been my strong suit, either, and I'm not about to start with an angry high fae and the dead girl who wants to kill my best friend's changeling brother.

     Best friend?

     Okay. I'm sorting out all the gushy emotional stuff later. Action now. I'm letting all this fae energy stay pent up inside me, right? So why not just let it all go? Blue energy boils off of me in waves and becomes wind, heavy with rain. A fog rolls over the area and all the fire goes out as I snuff it out with sheer will. I feel myself fall into Sheryl's arms, barely conscious, but overhead, in the mists, I see Reynardine stop.

     "Remarkable," he says.
   
     Sheryl lifts her gun. I put a hand on hers. "He's not attacking."
  
     "No, I am not," Reynardine agrees. "You humans sure have incredible powers of perception. As for you, stranger, I haven't seen humans use that style of aura manipulation in a few hundred years, and by the look of it, you didn't learn how to use it from anyone. Now, if there's anything I like, it's a good game. So how about... I tell you a secret, you don't shoot me, and next time we meet, we settle this in a proper duel."
   
     "I'd say deal," I say, and Reynardine's ears perk, "but I don't make those." My eyes are filled with dark spots.
   
     Sheryl takes a look at the spirit, whose arms are crossed, a bushy tail flicking out behind him in eager anticipation, and she says, "He would kill us without the slightest hesitation. Expect nothing out of his 'secrets'."
  
     "And we'd kill him, right? That's not how they do things over here. There's respect for the spirits. Even if it's... even if they're not doing everything right, I think we could at least be a little more chill about things." I say. "As long as it's not a formal deal, right?"
   
     Sheryl lowers her pistol.
   
     Reynardine's eyes glimmer.

     "Dashing. I'll see you around, then?"
  
     "Wait a second. What's the secret?" I ask.
   
     "Rivers," Reynardine says, "always flow to the lowest point. Farewell." With that, he turns into a fox and disappears into the mist, bringing accompanying dark figures with him.
   
     Sheryl helps me back through the gate, her eyes trained on the distance all the while. We walk back through several gates, a looping that takes a few hours in its own right.
  
     "You're not going after her?" I ask.
   
     She does not answer until we're at the first gate, where she guides me back through the town, her step stumbling. "Gus, you worry me."
   
     "Sorry," I say. "I know you'll have to put that down in your report, but I--"
   
     "You did fine," she says, opening the door. Trees sway in the wind about us, and Sheryl fingers her ring gently. "I'll handle this."
   
     The door is promptly slammed in my face. With this comes a surge of new energy, so I pace the main floor on wheelies, looking for Aitamah and Bain. Aitamah is preparing dinner in the kitchen, which is full of smoke. I only see her when her snarling face emerges through the darkness and she beats me out with a broom. Bain is nowhere to be seen, but her room is locked and British rock is blaring. Not my taste, but respectable.
   
     Well. Only one thing to do now.
   
     I scoot towards my door, swing a full 180, and head down the stairs to the lounge. Mr. and Mrs. Northcott are reclining with tea and biscuits in their mansion ripped straight out of Clue. Yeah, it's Conway with the forbidden fae magic in the library? Do I win now?
   
     I approach them shyly, even bothering to walk, and then, in the murky darkness of their poorly lit room, I fold my arms behind my back and stand tall. "Ehem."
   
     Mrs. Northcott turns. Her hair is a bushy mess, just like Asher's, and it frames her face and freckles. Her eyes are kind, though rimmed by bags, just as her face is beginning to wrinkle. "Yes, hon?"

     "Have you heard of a fae group called..." I already feel stupid. Mr. Northcott, who has the most outrageous moustache I've ever seen, leers down at me even though he's a solid foot or two shorter than me in his chair. "They're called the Kept?"

     "Gus, don't concern yourself with the Kept." Mr. Northcott puts down his tea.

     "I'm not your kid," I tell them. "I'm an agent of the American government and I'm trying to solve a very important case that you've done nothing but obstruct. Think about your sons, won't you? Don't you want justice for them?"

     Mr. Northcott gets up to his feet. "We are always thinking about our sons. In every decision we make, in everything we do..."

     And you're doing a terrible job of it, I'm tempted to say, but that's when someone flicks the light on.

     "Well, you're not doing bloody well, are you?" asks Asher, Bain at his side. His ice blue and warm brown eyes fix me and he squints as if he's in pain. "What are you doing? Shouldn't you be out on a shift?"

     "Oh uh, yeah." I have nowhere to go and I feel like death, but I'm sure I could always wheelie around town, maybe go bother 'Auntie'.

     "I'd like to have an honest chat with my folks, alone," he says. "If you don't bloody mind."

     I bite my lip. "Yeah, of course."

     "Good luck out there. I hope you find good leads," he says, and I can hear his voice tremble with the weight of his own lie and I hate him for it. Geez. Leave it to Asher to ruin an interrogation. His voice practically rasping, he mutters, "I want all of this to be over."

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Written by ChronaLilly