Faetality |✓|

Chapter Eighteen, Part One - Step Into the Light

"Ok I'm scared - what if we get caught?" whispered Lana, staring at me as the elevator doors closed shut, swallowing us whole.

"We won't get caught," I calmly replied, keeping my eyes attuned above to the numbers that would flash each time we reached a new floor. "Erica's back home with my dad, and Margie will text us and let us know if she leaves early."

"Yeah, but, but... what if she has a dog or something? A mean scary one - like a big-ass German Shepherd or one of those tiny, little, barking lap-dogs?"

"Lana, we're here and we're doing this so just take a deep breath and try to stay calm, ok? You don't even have to go in - you can wait in the hallway if you want."

"No way," she insisted. "What if someone walked by - how would I explain myself?"

"Then come inside then," I replied, fighting hard not to succumb to irritation.

The elevators dinged and the doors were opened. Approaching the first door on the right-hand side of the hallway, I strode forward as Lana followed close behind. Looking both ways to double check that the small hallway was indeed empty, I fished the key from my pocket and stuck it in the keyhole of the door, twisting successfully.

"Easy-peasy," I remarked with a grin, which Lana fearfully returned.

The moment I stepped inside Erica's small apartment, I felt the disappointment already settling in. The place was so immaculate, so clean and so boringly furnished, I knew I would find no obvious or immediate evidence that she was Fae. Until that moment I had forgotten that my father often spent the night, so of course she would have anything of her hidden life, well, hidden. So Lana and I would find nothing here without extraordinary effort on both our parts.

"Well," I began, glancing around the neat, sparsely furnished living room. "Let's get started, shall we?"

* * *

For twenty minutes Lana and I worked laboriously, working hard to comb every inch of Erica's apartment. Her place was compromised of a small, but comfortable living room, a decently sized bedroom, one tiny bathroom, and a kitchen that you could hardly turn around in. But the furniture was nice (expensive even), and so were the decorations. However, oddly enough, there were no pictures to be seen - no evidence of family or even of other friends. Her fridge was bare of anything but old take-out and condiments, her closet looked too neat and bare to be convincingly utilized, and there was absolutely nothing recorded on her DVR.

"This place doesn't even look lived in," Lana observed, once we'd met up in the living room again. "Lookit - there's dust everywhere."

"That's probably because she spends all her free time in the Otherworld. She probably only comes here to work and... be with my Dad."

I swallowed back the building anger, refusing to let it bury me.

Not without proof, I thought.

"I checked everywhere and I looked through everything I could find," Lana said, glancing helplessly around the room. "In boxes, cabinets, underneath the bed... inside her underwear drawer..." Lana paused with a dramatic shiver. "There are devices in there that will haunt me forever."

I sighed as well, and did a slow turn, my eyes raking over every surface of the living room. I was close to giving up completely. Of course the lack of evidence didn't change my mind that Erica was the Knight. It just meant that it would take me a little longer to find the proof. But I wouldn't give up. Not in a million years.

At the far end of the living room, beneath the modest flat screen that was screwed to the wall, sat a tall bookshelf full of literature on law. Most of the books there were heavy-looking and thick, with stuffy names like "The True Principle of Law and Order" and "Courtroom Proceedings". And just as I was about to cease and desist my quick perusal of the bookshelf, by complete chance my eyes happened to fall on one title in particular.

What would a book about faery tales be doing surrounded by a bunch of boring tomes about the law?

Quickly I strode over to the bookshelf and plucked the small, thin volume from its home. I opened the book to the very first page - a story about Little Red and the big bad wolf. Frowning, I turned the book upside down and shook out the pages.

Almost immediately, something square and white tumbled out. Going cold, I could do nothing but simply stand with my eyes glued to the beige carpet.

"Hey, what'd you find?" asked Lana, coming up behind me. "Oh," she said quickly, noticing the Clifton keycard. "Ooooh."

And there it was - like magic, kismet, fate, whatever the hell you wanted to call it. Here was my proof. My proof that Erica was the Ice Queen's sister. My proof that she was only using my father.

My proof that she had dared attack my mother.

At once, a boundless wave of fury began to buzz around the thoughts of my brain like a drove of angry bees. Gritting my teeth to hold back an anger that was close to exploding, I picked up the card and squeezed it in my fist.

"Oh, shit," Lana said in a quiet voice, her eye wide and round. "What should we do?"

I said nothing. Instead, I found the small, round AM/FM button on the DVR player after clicking on the television. I twisted the smooth, black knob of the radio until I found what I was looking for. At once, the beginning, melancholy tones of Beethoven's beautiful Moonlight Sonata filled the room.

With no hesitation and a deaf ear to Lana's inquiries, I turned up the volume and prepared to destroy absolutely everything in Erica's home.

* * *