A Crack in Everything Read Online Free Page B

to the sun so as to be invisible to human eyes. The girl paused in the doorway of the music shop, gazing back almost as if she could – well, not see him, but still sense him, perhaps? Could that be it? A touch of old blood, perhaps? It had looked like she could see through his glamour, just for a moment or two. But that wasn’t possible in this day and age when fae and humans rarely mixed anymore, let alone interbred. The old blood had largely died out.
    His instincts stirred, the deep-seated ancient knowledge ofhunter and hunted, intuitive and primal. Standing still as a statue, the late afternoon crowds flowed around him. Light broke through a far off gap in the clouds and fell on her. She glowed with it – special. He couldn’t shake the sense that she was special. And that discomfited him more than he could say. Mistle had already noticed her, after all, and it took something mighty special to get him to crawl out of whatever bottle he was currently drowning himself in.
    Even Jinx’s glamour hadn’t worked as fully on her as it should have. Mortal girls blushed and flushed, begging him for attention from the moment he touched them. A fae could always make a human’s blood run hot. It was the way of things.
    But she’d fought it. She’d fought so hard. For all appearances, it had barely affected her at all … well, right up until the end.
    Why hadn’t he taken advantage of that moment? He breathed out slowly, forcing his body to unwind. She’d looked like something else, something much greater than she was. Old blood, old soul, old and powerful. But she wasn’t. She was just a girl.
    Jinx waited until she sighed and turned away. She vanished inside. The sun slid behind the clouds and his world seemed a darker and colder place.
    Coincidence, he told himself. Nothing more.
    But that was a human excuse. The problem was that in the world of synchronisations all the fae inhabited, there was rarely any such thing.
    Unsettled, he headed back home, subtly moulding a path through the crowd of pedestrians who could not see him. A small trick, easily crafted, but one that made life so much easier. Just a case of turning their attention to something – anything – else but him while at the same time making them loath to walk too close to him. Just enough to get them out of his way. From the alleyway it was a short step into the Sídhe-space comprising his home, part of the larger network of Sídhe-ways which made up Dubh Linn. The fae city existed slightly to the left of the human one, overlaid upon it, lurking in the shadows and the forgotten places, the points of intersection where the two converged and all the places stolen away by his people over the centuries. It was grubby and glorious, full of things that never were, the half-dreams of a drink-sodden night. If the gilt had rubbed off it in places, that was only to be expected. Dubh Linn was not for the unwary.
    He was suddenly glad he’d shown her the way out.
    The club was almost deserted. With all the lights on, it lost its mystery and took on a shabby air. A far cry from the hollows of old, the elders were fond of saying, his matriarch Holly most dismissively of all. Jinx didn’t know and didn’t really want to know. Life in a hole in the ground, miles from the arse end of nowhere, didn’t appeal. He’d always lived in the city, as had most of the fae he knew. Times had changed, another favourite quote among his elders, but in this he was glad of it.
    A sound at the open door made him turn. The Magpies stood there, side by side, blocking any chance of escape. Theylooked alike, dressed as always in pristine black and white, their sharp eyes focused on him and on him alone.
    ‘Well, now, there he is,’ said Mags, smoothing back his glossy black hair from his forehead.
    ‘A hard man to track, our Jinx,’ Pie agreed.
    ‘What do you want?’ he asked, shifting nervously and failing to hide it. ‘Silver’s not here. Club’s not open until later.’ And