Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set

by Kristen S. Walker

  Glen frowned. “I’ll bring some of my things along to try to prevent any alarms from going off. Will you need anything for your part, Rosa? Matches, lighter fluid, a fire extinguisher in case things go wrong?”

  I shook my head. “I’m getting used to fire. I think I can start it—and contain it—all by myself.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe some salt, if you have it in large quantities.”

  “I’ll get some from the kitchens for you,” Ashleigh said.

  Glen jotted down some notes on a piece of paper. “So here’s what we’ve got so far. We’ll go to school like normal tomorrow, except for Rosa who will go to her house and get her things to bring back here. If you need a car to carry your stuff, just ask the castle staff for one of the drivers to take you. Then, Kai will go watch the store while the rest of us go back to the house to burn the garden. Rosa will burn it, Ashleigh will mask the smoke, and I’ll counter any alarms.” He stopped and looked up at Heather. “You’re coming too, right?”

  Heather nodded. “At least for moral support.”

  Ashleigh smiled and reached across to squeeze my hand. “Glen and I will stay at the castle tonight, so we’ll be here to keep you safe.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. I looked around at all of my friends. “Thank you for everything, guys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  On Wednesday morning, the day of Halloween and the blue moon, I was so tense and nervous that I couldn’t eat the delicious breakfast made by the castle staff. Ashleigh and Glen gave me big hugs as they said goodbye before school.

  “Try to relax,” Ashleigh said. “Once you’ve got your clothes, just take it easy for the day. Take a dip in one of the hot tubs or something to take your mind off of things.” She left me her cell phone to use. “You can call Glen to get in touch with us.”

  Glen squeezed my shoulder. “And don’t try anything by yourself when you’re at your house. Remember, we’ll all be there to help you out later.”

  I nodded. “I promise I won’t touch anything.”

  A little while after they left, Ashleigh’s cell phone rang in my pocket. I picked it up. “Hello?” My voice cracked on the word.

  “Hello,” my father’s voice said. “This is Rosamunde’s dad, Samuel. Is she there?”

  “It’s me, Dad.” I breathed a sigh of relief; I was afraid before that I wasn’t going to hear from him at all. “Did you get some time to think last night?”

  “Yeah.” He paused for a long time. “Look, I hate to do this, but I think you’re right. She’s gotten way too controlling the last few years. I have Akasha here in the car with me—I told your mother that I was going to drive her to school this morning, so she could get a head start on her big day. But we’re just going to drive around for a bit and then head back home to pack up some things.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “That’s great, Dad! I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself.”

  “We’ll see how well this goes. Are you going to be there?”

  “Yeah, I have my broom here, so I was going to fly over soon. I’ll meet you there. Do you think she’ll be long?”

  “No, she was already getting dressed when we left. I think we’ll wait twenty minutes, just to be on the safe side.”

  That was faster than I could fly there unless I really pushed it. “Expect me to be closer to thirty minutes. See you then, Dad. I love you.”

  When I got to the house, Dad and Akasha were waiting for me outside on the front porch. Dad looked up and down the street, chewing his lip. Akasha stood there and scowled with her arms folded.

  “It’s good to see you again.” Dad gave me a hug. “It was hard, but I managed not to tell your mother I saw you yesterday. She’s still really worried about you.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, well, I don’t really care how she feels right now.”

  Akasha glared at me. “You should care. She’s still our mother. And this whole thing is stupid. Why did you have to keep me out of school?”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “We’re running out of time until she figures out that something is going on and I need you guys to be away from here before I destroy the spell. You’re not missing much at school, anyway, because half of the day is going to be taken up by the Halloween party.”

  Akasha rolled her eyes. “It’s still affecting my attendance record, which I care about even if you don’t. And how did you rope Dad into your paranoid delusional fantasy about this spell that Mom cast on us? You don’t have any proof.”

  I glanced at Dad. “It’s not a delusion. Believe me, you’ll feel very different when I break that spell later.”

  Dad put his arm around Akasha. “Spell or no spell, I don’t think that your mother is a good person for us to be around any longer. I want you to come with me, at least until I’ve had the chance to talk to her about the way that she treats us and see if I can convince her to change.”

  I took a deep breath and tried not to say anything about that. If my dad thought that there was still hope for him and my mom to work things out after this, that was up to him—once I was sure that he was no longer being influenced by her magic. For now, I just had to concentrate on getting them out of the way so I could deal with that spell. “Are you guys ready to pack?”

  Dad nodded and unlocked the front door. He explained he thought each of us could pack one or two bags of clothes and other necessities, and then the rest of the space in his car would be taken up with boxes of medical journals and other important documents.

  I shook my head. “Actually, I don’t know if we’re going to get the chance to come back and get anything else, so we should try to grab everything that we can. Remember, we’re staying at the count’s castle, so we don’t need to bring food or anything,” I added.

  Akasha pouted. “Dad said you’re going to get her arrested or something by the faeriekin, so why can’t we just come back?”

  Dad and I exchanged a look. “I don’t think they’re going to arrest her,” I said. “Just take her powers away. So she’ll still have the house. But the sooner we get moving, the better. Mom comes home for lunch sometimes, so we need to be gone before noon.”

  With that plan of action, each of us went off to our own rooms to get started. In my bedroom, I found that my school bag was left on my desk, with my cell phone still inside. Well, after this afternoon I wouldn’t have to worry about my mom using it to track me, so I brought it.

  It was hard to decide what to take and what to leave behind. My room was filled with things that I’d collected for sixteen years and I didn’t want to lose it all. I packed clothes, including my spare school uniforms, my notebooks full of poetry, my photo albums and the pictures from my bulletin board, and my camera equipment. I grabbed the snow globe that my grandmother gave me for Christmas, and my favorite doll from when I was a kid. I left the blue dress that my mother made for my thirteenth birthday, the one that I always wore for special occasions. I’d finally have to pick out a new dress.

  Then I went into the bathroom that I shared with my sister and packed my toiletries. It would make a huge difference, staying in a strange place, if I could have the shampoo and the toothpaste that I liked. I kept looking at the clock, worried that we were going to run out of time. What if Mom called Dad at the hospital and found out that he wasn’t there? What if she came home early for lunch?

  I loaded my bags into the car, and then I helped my dad carry down the boxes of papers and journals from his study. We filled up the trunk of the car and the back seat. I would have to take my broom back to the castle, because there wasn’t going to be any room for me in that car.

  It was so weird, trying to pick and choose the pieces of my life that I wanted to save, and pack them all into a few bags in the car. I had lived my whole life in this house. I didn’t know what it felt like when most people moved, but this hurried packing in secrecy, throwing together a few things and running, breaking up my family—it was so strange. Ever since I’d come back from Faerie th
e day before, nothing felt quite real anymore, and this was the weirdest moment yet.

  I looked at my dad, and he threw his arm around my shoulders. “It will be okay, sweet pea. As long as we just have each other, we’ll be okay.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I told him. The big test would come in just a few hours. I looked at Akasha. “Do you have everything?”

  Akasha had brought down almost as many boxes as my dad. “This isn’t even half of my books. Could we come back for a second trip?”

  I looked at my watch and shook my head. It was almost noon already. “We can’t risk it. We have to go, now. You didn’t leave boxes all over the floor, did you? If she sees that everything’s gone, she’ll know that we left and she’ll come after us.”

  My sister glared up at me and folded her arms. “She’s not a monster or an axe murderer.”

  I stepped in front of her and leaned forward. “This woman is controlling our thoughts and our emotions with illegal, invasive, manipulative magic. We don’t know what she’s capable of, or how far she’s willing to go to keep us here. We have to get away from her to keep ourselves safe.”

  Akasha started to cry.

  Dad reached over and put his arms around her. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s going to be okay. Rosa, you don’t need to frighten your sister by exaggerating like that. We’re just going away for a few days until Mommy and Daddy can figure some things out.”

  I sighed and took a step back. I wasn’t going to argue with them any more right now. Once the spell was gone, we could talk about what happened next. The important thing for now was that they got out of the house.

  “I’ll see you guys back at the castle.” I grabbed my broom off the ground. “It’s time to go.”

  18

  Destruction

  That afternoon, everything was going according to plan. I was there just outside Crowther to meet up with my friends. We waited by the side of the road until Kai called and confirmed that Mom was at her store.

  We drove by my house once, but the windows were dark and there were no cars in the driveway. Glen parked across the street and we got out.

  Ashleigh had a look of concentration on her face. “I’m putting up a glamour to hide the smoke, just in case it drifts far enough that the neighbors could see it.”

  Glen looked around the yard. “I’ll stay here in the front to be the look out and watch the spells.”

  I looked at Heather and Ashleigh. “Okay, will you guys come with me?”

  We went out to the backyard. I handed salt to Ashleigh and Heather. “Help me make a boundary around the gardens,” I said. “A line around the outside, so we protect the forest, and another on the inside, to protect the house. Make sure that it doesn’t have any gaps.”

  The three of us started to walk around the gardens, tracing a line of salt. I started close to the house, following the path around the back porch.

  When we finished, I looked around, making sure that we hadn’t forgotten anything. Heather had traced around the backyard fence, and Ashleigh had protected the garden shed. Then, looking up at the house, I remembered the planters on the porches. “We have to get those plants, too.”

  So, first on the back porch and then out front, we went to each pot and planter and uprooted whatever was growing inside. Most of them were probably just decorative, but I wanted to be thorough. Nothing growing could survive. My mom had also trained vines of jasmine and honeysuckle to grow along the porch railings. I pulled them off, one stubborn twining vine at a time, unwinding them from the wood. We gathered every one of them and made a pile in the center of the backyard.

  I knelt by the pile of uprooted plants. “Stand back,” I warned the others. “Go out into the street. I want to make sure that everyone is clear of this.”

  Ashleigh held out a pack of matches. “Will you need these?”

  I shook my head. “No. This has to be a magical fire. I can start it on my own.”

  When they left, I looked down at the pile of green plants. They would not burn easily. But in my mind I remembered the dragon’s fire, burning so hot all around me that I was afraid it would melt my skin. I called on that fire and the pile burst into flames.

  I walked to the fence gate. When I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw that the flames had already spread to the nearest flowerbed. The fire seemed like a living thing itself, eagerly reaching out to consume every leaf and blossom, leaping easily over the paths and boundaries between beds.

  “Baby, what are you doing?”

  My head yanked up. This was the thing I’d dreaded all along.

  Mom hovered above the flames on her broom. She didn’t look angry, just sad, like she was really disappointed in me. My heart broke just looking at her.

  “I—I had to do it,” I managed to get the words out. “What you’re doing to us, controlling us with this spell, it isn’t fair.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” she crooned. She landed on the ground in front of me and put her arms out. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  I couldn’t resist. I rushed forward and threw my arms around her, letting her embrace me. All my emotions came out in a rush, tears streaming down my face. “Why did you do this? Why all the secrets, the manipulation…” I choked on a sob. “You were supposed to take care of us.”

  She stroked my hair as she held me. “I know you’re too young to understand,” she whispered over my head. “Just trust me when I say that I did this for the sake of our family. I’ve made so many sacrifices to protect you all. Trust me, this was necessary.”

  I pulled back and looked up at her. “What? How does a mind-control spell protect us at all?”

  Mom shook her head. “There’s things I can’t tell you. My spell kept us happy. But without this…” She gestured to the garden. “Our family would have fallen apart long ago.”

  “Then maybe it should have!” I yanked away from her touch. “Happiness built on lies isn’t real. That’s why Dad left, he couldn’t stay with someone who lied to him.”

  I expected her to yell at me now, to berate me the way she always did, but she just looked even sadder.

  “I’ve lost everything that matters to me,” she said, tears sparkling in her eyes, too. “You, your sister, and your father—you were all I had. Will you leave me alone here with nothing?”

  For a long moment, I couldn’t respond. The smoke was growing thicker, making it harder to breathe. This wasn’t a good place to have any conversation, let alone one so difficult and emotional.

  “Maybe we could try again,” I said at last. “If you apologize and promise not to use any more magic on us, then we could talk about moving back in. I have a bag in the car. The two of us could spend Halloween together, talking about everything… but you have to promise.”

  I looked into her eyes, hoping for a sign that I was getting through to her. She still hadn’t admitted that what she’d done was wrong.

  She smiled and opened her arms again. “Of course, dear, whatever you want. Just please, come back to Mommy.”

  I wanted to say yes. All I wanted was for things to go back the way they’d been. It felt like I was being torn in two, part of me going out to my mother and part of me hurt at her betrayal.

  But I had to be sure that she wasn’t just using more magic to manipulate me. I slipped my hand into my pocket and gave Mantis’s charm a squeeze.

  My feelings stayed in the same turmoil. But my mother disappeared.

  I gaped at where she’d stood, unable to believe my eyes. She was right there—I’d touched her and everything. But she’d never been there.

  The garden spell must have had a defense mechanism, something triggered when I tried to destroy it. The image of Mom was an illusion designed to make me stop. Of course it was another lie. She’d never act so sympathetic and caring, not when I was destroying her masterpiece. I should have seen through it.

  The only consolation was my friends hadn’t been here to see me make a fool of myself. After all my plans to confront my
mother and hold her accountable for what she’d done, I’d melted at the first sign of remorse. I wasn’t strong enough to face her in person. Better get out of here before the real thing showed up.

  I wiped the tears and soot from my face, then I went through the gate to the front yard and started more fires on either side of the driveway.

  I walked out into the street and joined my friends, who were all standing there staring at the fire. No one said anything. As we watched, the flames spread, twisting and writhing, reaching up to burn the plum trees that I’d eaten from every summer, the blackberry bushes that had scratched my arms when I hid in them as a child, the flowers that I’d picked and woven into wreaths when I pretended to be a Fae princess. They were all turning into smoke and ash. As I looked closely, I saw the flames spread up just to the line of salt, but they never crossed over. The house was safe.

  When the flames had died down to embers, I went back to Glen’s car and took my broom out of the trunk. I flew over the house and the yard once, checking to be sure that the gardens were completely destroyed and the fire wasn’t going to spread any farther. It was an eerie sight, that blackened and smoking wreck. Everything smelled of fire—and a little like incense, where the herbs had burned. I didn’t have to do any magic to check what I wanted to know: I knew that the stink of my mother’s spell was gone for good.

  The rest of Halloween went by without event. I hung out at the faeriekin party with Kai and my friends, and let the festivities take my mind off of everything. Glen and Ashleigh went to the Court meeting without me, and afterward Glen let me know that they were taking their time to review the evidence and decide what to do.

  Thursday morning, the first day of November, Ashleigh and Glen drove my sister and me to school. Heather joined us by the bus stop. Akasha hurried away into the school building by herself. I noticed that she opened the front door on her own.