Free The Iron Sword (The Fae War Chronicles Book 1) by Jocelyn Fox Page A

school,” Molly said, but I heard the doubt in her voice.
    Something was strange about the motorcycle. At first, I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, the idea hovering just out of my range of thought. But then, as I inspected the machine from a few feet away, I realized—it didn’t gleam . And not just because of the dust—because it didn’t have any visible metal parts. I wasn’t a gear-head type, so I didn’t know if there were specialty bikes made out of different materials, but it struck a chord of unease in the pit of my stomach. “No metal,” I said to Molly. I touched the handlebar gently. “Or…if it is metal, it’s coated with something.”
    “Shit,” she said under her breath.
    “When’s sundown?” I asked.
    Molly glanced at the sun, shielding her eyes, and then at her watch. She muttered another curse. “Half an hour.”
    I looked at the house. “I don’t hear wailing or gnashing of teeth,” I commented, “so I suppose he looks fairly normal.”
    “Maybe it’s a she,” Molly said darkly.
    “Well…what are we going to do?” I flicked a fleck of dust off the seat of the bike.
    “Nothing else to do but go in,” Molly said. She glanced at me and then handed me the backpack. “Grab the canister of salt, if you can. It should be in the left cupboard, top shelf.”
    I nodded and slung the backpack over my shoulders. The horseshoe pressed against my skin as I walked forward, still tucked into the waistband of my shorts. Somehow its cool weight reassured me. Walking up the steps to the porch after Molly, I watched as she steeled herself before putting a hand on the door-handle. Before she could open the door, though, the knob turned and Austin swung the door wide.
    “Hey, Molls,” he said brightly, though his eyes betrayed his cheerful demeanor. I knew suddenly that Austin, too, suspected something. “You didn’t tell us that one of your friends from school was stopping by.” He stepped aside to let us in.
    Molly brushed past him. I widened my eyes in response to his curious look, hoping he understood that we didn’t know what was going on in this instant any more than he did. I wiped my sneakers cursorily on the doormat before stepping inside.
    The stranger was seated at the kitchen table with his back to us, facing Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. Mr. Jackson looked quite at ease, in his normal blustery way, but apprehension pinched Mrs. Jackson’s face, pulling down the corners of her mouth slightly and shuttering her normally cheery eyes. She glanced up as Molly entered the cabin, and an emotion flitted quickly across her expression, too quickly for me to identify with any confidence. I thought that maybe it was fear. Fear for Molly, or for herself?
    “Hey now, Molls, you were bein’ downright rude when you didn’t tell us that Finn here was gonna drop by today,” Mr. Jackson boomed, rising from the table when he saw Molly and me.
    “Finn,” Molly repeated. Her voice cut sharply across the room.
    The stranger didn’t move. His hair was dark, but I didn’t know whether it was actually black—where the light fell across the back of his head from the window, I saw sheens of deep purple and blue and green. I thought of winter, and the reflection of light on a dark frozen pond.
    “Well, yeah,” said Mr. Jackson, as if nothing at all was wrong. I stepped to the side, toward the kitchenette. Maybe I could slip the salt into the backpack before the stranger turned around. Maybe he wasn’t the Sidhe knight come to collect Molly at all. My eyes were drawn again to the impossible beauty of his hair, the colors mingling under the bright touch of sunlight. Then I blinked and took another step toward the cabinets. Focus. I had to focus, because if this really was the Sidhe knight…things could go downhill fast, and we would need all the protection we could get.
    I swung the backpack off my shoulders and put it on the countertop of the kitchenette. I opened cabinets like I was searching for