Dame of Owls Read Free Page A

hard.
                  The Lily Knight rammed his knee into her stomach. Winded and thoroughly pissed off, Sid slammed the crown of her head into his face. He pummeled at her, but she head-butted him again and again until he finally went limp.
                  Even weak as he was from the gunshot wound, it felt like the fight had taken hours. Her ears rang, and she was sure her forehead was gashed open and bleeding. For a long moment she just lay there, waiting for her thoughts to reorder themselves. When they finally did, she couldn’t say she was pleased.
                  Chris.
                  Sid pushed the Lily Knight off of her with a grunt and stood up. Blood dribbled over her eye. No sign of Chris in the car or huddled someplace sensible. On the other hand, no sign of his well-stabbed body either.
                  First things first. Sid popped the trunk, then manhandled the Lily Knight into it. She used his knife to sever the safety release, and laid the tire iron over his chest for good measure. She slammed the trunk shut, then retrieved her gun.
                  She checked Chris’s coffee; not a centimeter lower than she’d poured it. He’d tricked her, the bastard. Mortals were as infuriating as the Summer Court when they wanted to be.
                  Sid grabbed a handful of napkins out of the glove compartment and pressed them to her bloody forehead as she thought. The first thing most mortals would have done was walk the highway in hopes of hitching a ride. But this road was nigh on deserted, and Chris had proven himself cleverer than straight lines. That left the woods, a hike, and a pain in her ass. Sid was not a particularly deft magical sort, but she’d have to manage.
                  Her duffle bag was in the backseat. She grabbed it and went to sit in the grass among old picnic tables. There was a trick all fae learned as children, a little cantrip mostly used to cheat at games. She pulled a notebook and a pencil out of the bag, stuff she’d bought at a drugstore somewhere. Tradition demanded parchment and ink, but she was mortal blooded enough that magic didn’t get finicky with her.
                  Ripping a page out of her notebook, she folded it into a rough arrow. On the front she wrote Christopher Protz. Then she swiped her thumb through the last bit of blood on her head, just enough to leave a clear fingerprint. She popped the arrow in her mouth and chewed meditatively, ignoring the taste of pulp and blood.
                  Crude, but effective. Sid stood up and brushed grass off her pants. Intuition, solidified now, led her into the forest. She left her duffle bag behind; she’d get a new one later, and make Chris pay for it. Her car keys she chucked in the opposite direction, hopeful that the Lily Knight would spend a few days in her trunk at least.
    ---
                  As tired as Sid had been, it wasn’t hard to imagine Chris’s hefty head start. On top of that, the forest hated her cold presence. She kept tripping on roots and vines, and once or twice found herself wishing she had a defter gift with magic, just to freeze some damnably green things to death. Chris would be lucky if she let him have a conscious thought between here and the next safe place in the Thoroughfare.
                  Vicious swearing broke the silence. That, and the trumpeting scream of something she really didn’t want to deal with. Sid wasn’t surprised the Lily Knight had been deemed incompetent enough to require back up; she was surprised the Summer Court had gone through the trouble of corralling a unicorn. Was Chris that important to them? Unicorns were hard to control, but could understand the difference between ‘kill’ and ‘subdue.’ Sid hoped for Chris’s sake that this wasn’t the Summer Court taking Sid’s offense against them out on