Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Home.
She swallowed back the lump of longing in her throat. She had missed New York more than she could possibly explain. While she had come to love Dublin, it wasn’t home, would never be in the way that New York was. Even if the will-o’-the-wisps had come from Ireland, New York would always be hers.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Graves murmured at her side.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed it,” she confessed.
“It’s waiting for you to come home.” Their eyes met across a New York City street as they had so many times before. “As am I.”
She had to turn away from the intensity of him. He made so much more sense in this environment. But she was still too tangled up in him to know which way was up or down. Just like being inside this indescribably strange, spoked wheel of a market.
The rumbling of footsteps broke Kierse from her reverie. She could see the goblins coming up the last few stairs.
“Fuck,” she hissed.
“That’s them!” a goblin roared. “Get ’em.”
“This way,” Graves said and then took off.
They weren’t the only people cutting through the New York streets, but they were the only ones being chased by a horde of goblins. They barreled through monsters and people alike, running through a stand of goblin fruit and pushing aside performers who got in their way. Kierse was thankful that the goblins chasing them were brandishing knives, axes, and clubs, and not heavy machine guns like the ones at the entrance. Yet another indication that these weren’t official guards, but some lesser, unsanctioned group.
“How are we going to get out of this?” Kierse gasped.
She was grateful for her Fae strength. She’d been fast before, but now she could outpace the goblins. She didn’t know how long she could keep it up.
“I know a place,” Graves said.
And he did seem to know these streets better than the ones in Dublin. Which made sense, considering he was the warlock of New York City. He’d probably been to the New York entrance of the market more times than the Dublin one, especially once he’d been banned from Dublin years ago.
“Here. In here,” he said, wrenching open a door. They burst through, and Niamh slammed it behind them. Then they were running again. A few seconds later, the door opened, and a cacophony continued to follow them through the twists and turns of the market. Kierse would have been entirely lost without Graves directing them. It might look like her city, but it wasn’t her city.
They fled down a narrow alley and through an open, unwatched back entrance into an unlit warehouse—or were they backstage in some underground cabaret? Graves turned sharply, still running confidently in the dark…and then a woman screamed as they burst out onto the stage where she was performing.
“Excuse us,” Kierse said with a wave.
They barreled back off stage left between the curtains in the wings. The squawks from the audience as the goblins appeared on stage behind them would almost have been humorous if they weren’t still being hotly pursued. However, the crowd and performers had slowed the goblins down enough that their trio finally had a lead. If they could just…get out of sight.
“This way,” Graves said. He opened another door into a darkened room and stepped aside for Kierse and Niamh to follow him through, then eased it closed, throwing a heavy bolt.
They all held their breaths as they listened for the goblins. There came the grunts and clanks of the troop careening into the hallway outside, then a pause. For a moment, they could hear snuffling as the goblins tried to figure out where they had gone. But then their pursuers continued on, barreling past in their haste.
Kierse blew out a heavy breath. Niamh doubled over, panting. Graves dusted the dirt off his shoulders from the chase.
“That was fucking close,” Niamh grumbled as she straightened. “We could have negotiated before violence.”
“Did they look like the kind of goblins who were going to negotiate?”
“You could have tried before bashing their brains in!”
“I’ll remember that next time I want to be incapacitated…”
“Enough,” Kierse said. “We made it through. That’s all that matters.”
“I hate the market,” Niamh grumbled.
“So say we all,” Graves agreed.
“How do we find the bookkeeper from here?” Kierse asked.
“We’ll backtrack to the bar. I put out a feeler for a contact I have in the market. He’s going to meet us there.”
Kierse eyed him skeptically. “Someone you trust?”
“Not exactly.”
“Who does he trust?” Niamh asked.
Fair point.
“Lead the way.”
Chapter Sixteen
From the outside, the pub looked like any seedy bar Kierse had ever been to in the city. It had a wooden sign out front proclaiming it Ye Olde Pilgrim.
Kierse glanced down at the sign and back up to Graves. “Seriously?”
“This place is older than the pilgrims, actually. Puritans rename everything,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “The market had settled in the New York space before the Americas were even colonized. It only began to reshape itself around the Manhattan entrance after the area was taken from the indigenous people.”