Nera Court resided at the heart of Roccia Nera's west bank, where it was nestled in a concrete valley between all the glitzy high-rises and metal skyscrapers the city had in abundance. The area wasn't marked by a sign or by map, and only locals knew to call it "Nera Court." It consisted of one main avenue that merged into a lopsided roundabout. From that roundabout, a dozen or so lanes, byways, and crowded alleys branched away into the city depths.

It was the kind of place a mundane shouldn't be wandering around during the night or the day, unless they were looking for trouble. 

Before venturing out to the Court, I had to call a cab to take me over to the university. Once there, I went to my desk to find my keys and my mercifully intact wallet, only to discover that my car had been towed sometime during the night. Several calls and a trip to the impound lot later, I was out two hundred bucks and it was almost noon—but I finally made it to Nera Court.

The engine sputtered to a stop as I pulled into a spot below the shadow of one of the Court's many towers. I got out of the car and let my eyes move over the busy street and the crowded roundabout where a statue of the city's Baron lorded over the frustrated drivers. Emial's statue gleamed as if the weather couldn't diminish its shine. 

Though the street had an abundance of vehicles darting about and cutting each other off, the sidewalks were almost vacant, populated only by the occasional tourist wandering through or a supernatural out on their smoke break. It was quiet during this time of day, when all vamps were tucked into their beds and most shifters weren't yet up and about. At first glance, the docile setting seemed safe.

Of course, I knew better. Sibbie often told me about the profusion of calls she received regarding the Court, and how many times she'd show up just to find an empty alley splattered in blood. 

Exhaling through my nose, I took the first left from the main avenue and entered a quiet side street.

Night Threads wasn't far from the Court's center, nor was it in what would be considered a "bad" part of town. As a store that serviced both humans and the supernatural, it held a dominant position and acted as a flashy distraction for the less...savory places in Nera Court. Night Threads and the establishments like it drew the eyes of the mundane, showed them peeks of the strange and otherworldly to satisfy their curiosity, and kept unattended humans from wandering where they shouldn't. 

The place was open, but I didn't bother to walk inside. As the name would suggest, "Night Threads" stocked a selection of lingerie, underwear, and other nightclothes. I stood outside at the display window as if I were looking at the scantily clad mannequins—when I was actually unspooling a length of my talent to let it wander into the building.

I ignored the itching of my heated skin as I tried to see the store through my mind's eye. It was difficult to do so when I had to keep my tired, hooded eyes open too, but I managed to get a general impression of the place. There was a milieu of different essences traipsing in and out of the door and along the swept alley behind me. Each essence carried its own signature and its own burden of emotions. 

The amount of lust I could sense wasn't surprising, but that didn't stop my cheeks from blushing. 

I found a trace of Theda's presence in the store, though it'd been greatly diminished by time and the different tastes of magic it was crossed with. Her signature was greatest behind the register, but there were thin wisps and trails leading here and there within the store, as if she'd walked around to help customers or to restock a shelf. It took me almost ten minutes to realize the trail finally exited the building and went right past me away from the main avenue.

It disappeared only a few paces from Night Threads' door. The elements and foot traffic had destroyed the trail.

As far as I could tell, there was nothing amiss. There were no flashes of fear or splinters of adrenaline or shock. Just a bland sense of mild happiness. Given that her magic never wavered, it seemed the Havik vampire was a content, even-tempered woman—which surprised me, considering who her cadre Master was.

Thinking about Havik made me shiver with dread.

"Are you wondering what he likes?"

Startled, I turned to the woman who'd stepped from the store's doors. "What?" 

"I see you're looking at our selection. Are you trying to decide what he'd like to see you in most?"

I choked and backed away from the window with my empty hands held up. My face was suddenly burning and it had nothing to do with the small use of my ability. "N-no! I'm just—!" I looked again at the display and—with no small amount of horror—realized I was standing in front of the "nocturnal lover" presentation. 

Marvelous. 

I turned heel before she could say anything else and took off in the other direction.

Other people probably wouldn't have been embarrassed, but situations like that always made me uncomfortable. My condition didn't allow me to form any...intimate relationships. Sure, I had a handful of trusted friends who knew what I was and what I hid under my clothes, but I couldn't date someone or build any sort of connection without literally trusting that person with my very life. That kind of trust was impossible to find when any relationship I started would be founded on a giant lie; the lie that I was a human being.

I sighed through my nose as I hurried from Theda's work and tried to reorient my scattered thoughts. The main avenue and the store lay behind me and I was walking into the deeper, less friendly territories of Nera Court. Danger was present even during the day, but it was mitigated by the lack of any fanged residents and—as I had just reiterated to myself—I wasn't a human. I wasn't clueless or defenseless.

The buildings I passed were old but well-maintained, each brick and stone brushed and cleaned while the cobbled, unnamed lanes branching from the street were all swept from end to end. The Riots in the eighties hadn't come anywhere near this part of the city. I knew somewhere in the Court's depths Emial's residence was hidden—or so the rumor said. I had never actually seen the place, nor had I any desire to do so.

I didn't see anyone, which wasn't surprising, but I did sense their presence when I reached out with my talent. One of the stores I crossed proclaimed it was a "tax assessor" office, but I could see under the spelled front to the sign below, which clearly advertised magi services. Magi were notorious for being mercenaries, and before vampires had been recognized as legal beings, the magi had been hired to hunt and kill them for money.

Sometimes, if the pay was good and the magi was shady enough, they still did.

I could sense two of their kind inside, their magic welling like molten lava between cracks of darkness—but there wasn't anything of interest there. I shut my eyes and kept moving, seeing spots of violence pop up in my mind in small explosions of iridescent light, like reflective paint-splattered upon the walls and ground. The violence drew the city in perfect detail, and I could drift onward without my sight for quite a ways.

A lot of it was vampire against human aggression—more of it than I wanted to know about or see. Human fear was bright and vivid and sharp, sudden and as abrupt as lightning streaking across a stormy sky. My ability wasn't precise enough to tell me names or to tell me the whole story of what had occurred, but I could find the outline if I dared to linger and decipher it. Most had the same tragic tale; they were taken unawares, brought to a shadowy corner, and eaten alive.

There were other pockets of violence and raw emotion, too. Pulsating clumps of spilled rage and adrenaline called to me from a large, plain warehouse down the street. It was shifter against shifter violence—Were fights. They were illegal across the country, but a silly mundane law like that didn't stop Roccia Nera's supernatural community. Bleak spots of death underlined the well of unleashed wild magic.

I didn't have the heart to go nearer. I turned onto the next street.

I noted the difference in the atmospheric essence the moment I stepped into the rustic alley. My surroundings—vividly painted in the other parts of the Court—were dull and less defined here. Frowning, I eased my eyes open and drew my ability back into my body as my scars burned in warning. Searching such a large area was taxing. Retracting my ability also meant consuming all those violent bits of magic I'd been tasting, and those volatile emotions left an acrid film in my mouth as they hummed in my veins.

As the city's magical fugue pressed down upon me, I was once again reminded of why I hated Nera Court.

The alley I'd entered was comprised of white stone walls and a worn cobble pathway. The storefronts had their addresses clearly stenciled above their lintels in prim, gold numbers. The gritty smell of asphalt and iron was stolen by a river of jasmine and lilac. Overhead, a monstrous, dormant wisteria vine canopied the entirety of the alley. I imagined it was beautiful in the spring, but in late fall its branches were bleached white and skeletal.

Holding my ability as close as I was, I could still sense the presence of witches meandering inside their stores. I always compared the feel of their magic to the Weres, but while a shifter's magic was untamed and wild, a witch's was steadfast and hardy, like a tree's iron roots delving into the earth's crust. The witches I sensed radiated with tired boredom as they went about their afternoon business.

I stopped when I almost stepped through a new well of energy. Among the tepid, listless emotions filtering through that quiet area, this well was a sudden burst of fear and pain that I could have probably found from half a block away, if I'd been looking for it. Unlike most of the violence in the area, the aggressor of this attack hadn't been a vampire. The vampire had been the victim.

The aggressor was Fae.

I didn't know what type of Fae, nor what the altercation had been about. All I felt was the Fae's abrupt bolt of magic striking the vampire, and the vampire's fear splattered across the quaint, quiet alleyway. Blinking to bring my ability's double-vision into focus, I stared at the luminous streaks of terror left on the cobbles and followed their progression down the lane.

The vampire had been dragged away.

Was it Theda? I couldn't tell. When someone's essence was so warped by emotion, I could no longer interpret who it belonged to unless I was familiar with that person. I wasn't familiar with Theda—and I didn't truthfully know what her magic would be like if she'd been attacked and rendered helpless.

Swallowing my trepidation, I rubbed my itchy skin through the sleeve of my jacket and followed the trail.

The alley turned and came to an end before a two-story building sporting a single door and a spotted display window. The bold red paint on the trim and facia had faded and begun to peel, but the wear on the threshold and door spoke of the store's popularity. The Fae was inside somewhere, their magic revolving like a torpid tempest just waiting for an excuse to get riled up. I didn't know if the vampire was there, too.

Above the window, the words Queen Mab's Trinkets were painted in curling script.

I didn't stand outside as I had at Night Threads. I didn't want to push any part of my talent out of my body and into the store when the Fae's magic was so thick it brushed against me with a physical weight. The static it emitted zinged through my flesh and had paltry beads of sweat blooming on my brow.

A small bell chimed when I poked my head in the door and observed the interior. It was cold inside. I was surprised by the nip of the air against my cheeks and could only guess how frigid it must be to a mundane. Indeed, the human behind the cluttered counter was wrapped in a thick parka with the hood up and a pair of gloves on his hands.

The stock consisted of an assortment of strange items and, as the sign had said, trinkets. I spotted a collection of miniature Anubis Eyes—meant to scare away demons—in a curio cabinet next to a rack of "functional" witch brooms. The brick walls were covered in framed pictures of the supernatural, strange items, and long gris-gris chains hung from the ceiling. Most of it I knew was laid out as a gimmick, as stuff tourists would pay far too much money to own, and yet I could sense the tingle of other, charmed items hidden in all those junky souvenirs.

This close, I could feel the eye of the Fae's storm lingering overhead. I let my eyes lift to the bare rafters and could hear the gait of the creature as they walked about upstairs, could almost see the motes of dust fall from the boards.

Whoever they were, they were powerful—and they weren't someone I wanted to mess with. The vampire had disappeared somewhere inside, but I decided this was no longer my problem. I had enough information to give Havik. It was time to get the hell out of there.

"Can I help you with something?" the human clerk asked, his voice muffled by the top of his padded collar.

My gaze flicked upward again as I shoved down my dread. The footsteps paused when I spoke. "No," I said, easing out the door again. "Nothing at all."