I let him pull me inside the house, grateful for the warmth, but I held my hand out to keep him from hugging me again. “Why were you worried?”
“You’re talking again?” He gaped at me for a minute, then shook his head. “Hey, then why didn’t you answer your phone? We’ve all been trying to call you. With the roads closed, no one could get to your house and we weren’t sure how big the affected area was.” He looked down at my broom. “I guess you had to fly out.”
“Yeah, sorry about the broom.” I leaned my broom up next to the front door, but I kept my shoes on, so I didn’t step up into the main house. I didn’t have time to stay. “And my phone is dead. But I didn’t see a roadblock or anything. I guess someone should set something up to watch the edge and warn people not to drive into the middle of the area. It looks like technology just stops working.”
Then I wondered if my phone had started working again when I left the area. I pulled it out of my pocket and pressed the button, but nothing happened. Well, maybe with charging it would start working again. At least that was what I hoped.
Kai snatched the phone out of my hand. “Why, what happened out there? I keep hearing different rumors that some kind of disaster happened, possibly something magical, but nobody knows the cause—”
“My mom happened.” I took the phone back from him, because he wasn’t going to learn anything from staring at a dead phone. “She tried to open a gate to the Otherworld, screwed it up somehow, and now everything is coming through the Veil and warping reality.”
He gaped at me. “Hang on, what now? Have you told the faeries about this?”
I waved my hand away. “No time for that right now. I came here to apologize and ask for your help.”
His face fell. “Of course.” He sat back heavily on the step and put his head in his hands. “I’ve been waiting for you to need me again. I figured it would be some kind of family drama. But I don’t know if there’s anything that I can do to help you fix your mom’s mistake.”
“No, listen to me for a minute. I’m sorry for what happened—”
He looked back up at me. “Sorry that you made a mistake by getting involved with criminals when everyone warned you to stay away from them, or sorry that you cheated on me with one of them?”
“Sorry that I lied to you.” I folded my arms and glared at him. “When I wasn’t comfortable in our relationship anymore, I should have told you and ended it then, instead of accepting your non-apology and dragging things out. Or at least I should have broken up with you before I got involved with anyone else. What you did doesn’t excuse me hurting you.”
“What I did?” Kai’s head shot up. “I love you! I would never do anything to upset you!”
I snorted and turned away. “I can’t take any more of your excuses. Either tell me that you’ll help me find my sister, or not, and stop wasting my time.”
He took several deep breaths. Finally, he said, “I’m still upset, and I still need to talk about it with you when things aren’t crazy. But I’m going to help you because it’s the right thing to do.”
I turned around and stopped face to face with Kai as he stood up again. “So if I promise to talk to you about it later, then we’re okay for now?”
He held up one finger. “We’re not okay, not even for now. I said I would help you. So we need to find your sister. Are we tracking down your mom or what?”
I shook my head. “Magikin are coming through the Veil, and some crow demons or something snatched Akasha—”
Kai spluttered. “There’s what?”
I wrung my hands in frustration. “There’s not time for all of this. Magikin live on both sides of the Veil, but the Fae won’t let most of them come through into our world. Everything’s coming through now, from goblins to pookhas. A pair of them took Akasha. The description I got was long beaks, some kind of giant bird, wearing big robes, and my patron said that they sounded like crow demons. And that you’d be able to track them.”
Kai scrunched up his face and put his hand over his eyes. “Okay, so they just lie about it to everyone? Why didn’t I know about this?”
“Your mom was probably going to tell you when she thought you were mature enough to handle the truth,” I said flatly. “So, can you track crow demons?”
“Will you slow down and let me think for a minute!”
I took a step back in surprise. “I’m sorry. I did just show up and dump a lot of stuff on you. If you’re not up for it, I’ll go ask someone else.” I turned and reached for the door handle.
“Wait.” Kai reached around me and pushed the door shut again. “Crow demons. That sounds like an old legend. Karasu tengu is what they’re called in Japan. But they don’t really exist, or at least, they haven’t for a long time.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “But maybe they still do on the other side of the Veil. Could you track one?”
He sighed. “Whatever it is, they can fly, right? So it’s not likely that I’d be able to just track them by scent. There’s nothing left in the air.”
“Can I just take you to where they grabbed her, and you can take a look around for clues?” I smiled at him hopefully.
Kai smiled back. “Sure, I’ll try. But first, I should call the others and let them know that you’re safe. Glen was gonna send someone by your house to check on you, and they need to know that you’re not there.”
16
The Other Faerie Queen
Akasha
If I’d thought that I was getting the hang of my Fae powers or had any real magical strength, all of those illusions were shattered when the two big, black bird demons busted down the door to the restroom in The Drip and snatched me away.
I couldn’t move, not to scream, not even to look and see which way they were taking me. They carried me outside and flew up into the sky. I felt the rush of wind over my body, and I watched the ground drop away sickeningly below. I’d been on the back of a broomstick with Mom and Rosa a few times, but balancing on a broom was nothing like being slung over someone else’s shoulder when they had huge wings flapping up and down. It was a rough ride. After the first few moments of trees gliding by, I gave up trying to see where we’d been and closed my eyes against the vertigo.
There was no way to measure the time we spent in the air. Somehow, I managed not to lose my lunch. And then, finally, we landed again and the creepy monster set me down gently on the ground—and then I found that I could move again.
I opened my eyes and screamed as loud as I could. “Help! I’ve been kidnapped!”
Some invisible force pushed my mouth closed again, and my screams died away. I blinked and looked around. A breathtakingly beautiful, dark-haired Fae draped in a cloak of black bird feathers—I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman—stood smirking down at me.
“That’s enough of that,” the Fae said in a deep, melodious voice, and I just managed to catch a hint of feminine tones. She waved to the huge birds behind me. “I apologize for the rudeness of my friends, but I never intended to frighten you. Now, if you promise not to scream again, I’ll give your voice back.”
I turned my head to look around a little better. We were in a clearing in the middle of the forest, which didn’t tell me much of anything, since most of the county was forest. But there were no signs of civilization, not even a trail marker. Odds were good that there wasn’t another human for miles around, and the huge bird-things were staring down at me menacingly as if they were ready to grab me if I tried anything. So the only thing to do for now was play along and look for an opening to escape.
I looked back at the Fae and nodded.
“Ah, that’s good.” She waved her hand and the force holding my jaw shut disappeared again.
I took a deep breath and narrowed my eyes at her. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”
She swept the cloak aside, revealing a shimmering silver gown that looked as if it had been spun out of moonbeams, and sat down on a tree stump. Without any gesture from her,
the tree stump grew up and out into a throne of twisted wood. The top sprouted branches which spread out red and gold leaves—the colors of autumn.
Then she pointed behind me, and I watched as another tree twisted itself into a chair, although much less ornate than hers. “You may be seated,” she said with a touch of condescension. “And we will have a little chat. I would very much like to get to know the girl who is responsible for opening an unrestricted gate between the worlds.”
I sat down—my knees were shaking, and I was grateful for the support—but I folded my arms and glared at her. “I didn’t open the gate on my own. It was mostly my mother’s doing. She also warned me about talking to strangers. So who are you?”
She smiled, but there was no warmth in the expression—more like the grimace of a cat that has caught a mouse and now intends to toy with it. “No human, even a witch, could open a gate,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It was your Fae blood that called to our world. And your nature should tell you who I am, but since you are apparently young and unfamiliar with our ways, I will tell you. I am Morrigan, and once upon a time, I was the queen of the Unseelie Court.”
I shook my head, because everything that I’d heard about the Unseelie contradicted what I’d just heard. “What do you mean, the queen? I thought that the Unseelie were more of an anarchist movement, without all of the archaic rules about Fae nobility lording it over everyone else.”
Morrigan laughed, and the sound was like rich molasses running down a hill—beautiful but terrible and deadly. “Yes, that’s why I said the former queen. Once, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts were equal, trading off control each half of the year. When times began to change in your world, overthrowing old monarchies in favor of democratic republics, I abdicated my own throne to avoid a coup. But sadly, that gave my sister, Brigitte, the opportunity to make her court more powerful.” Her smile faded and she looked off into the distance. “The Otherworld no longer changed seasons, and time became locked in place. Meanwhile, Brigitte only let the magikin that she could control into your world, holding them back in a medieval society. And since I could no longer pass through the Veil, I had no power to stop her.”
Her glittering green eyes turned back to me. “Now you’ve let me out again. I am no ruler, but I feel an obligation to help my people who were relegated to second-class citizens in your world. I have brought friends with me—not servants that I can order around, but people who believe in the same thing as me, who want to create change. They have different ideas about how we can accomplish this, so they have splintered off into other groups, and I cannot control what they do. But some of us believe that the first thing we should do is rescue those who were arrested for their efforts to open the gate.” Her lips curved up in a more intimate smile, as if she could see right into my heart. “I understand that one of them is your father.”
I looked down at my hands, which gripped the armrests of the chair until my knuckles were white. “You mean Sir Allen.” I cleared my throat. “I—I didn’t know until a week ago that he was my real dad. We’ve barely even talked before. I don’t know how I feel about being part Fae, or about him. My other dad—the human one—he’s always been nice to me, and took care of me like I was really his daughter. I don’t think that’s just because my mom cast a spell to make him think that.” I took a deep breath. “It feels like betraying him to call anyone else my dad.”
Morrigan stood up and walked toward me. Her presence was even more overwhelming up close. But she knelt down next to my chair, completely unlike an imperious queen, and laid her hand gently on my arm.
“Of course you shouldn’t abandon the man who raised you,” she said softly. “But I think you also owe it to yourself to understand where you came from. There’s no limit to the number of people that you let into your life or that you show respect for. If you got to know Allen on his own terms, you might find that he has different things to offer than Samuel, without him replacing your other father.”
Her grip tightened on my arm. “But besides how you feel about him personally, Allen was doing what he thought was right to help you and your mother, not to mention everyone else who is oppressed by the Seelie Court. Do you believe it’s right for him to be locked up in jail or banished to another world for that? Has he hurt anyone by his actions?”
I thought back to my mother using my sister to get information about the Seelie, lying to our family, trying to kidnap Ashleigh and blackmail Glen. Mom had hurt people. But Sir Allen hadn’t done any of that. He’d been lied to, just like me. Nobody got hurt because of him, but the Seelie were calling him a traitor and putting him on trial.
I looked into Morrigan’s eyes and shook my head. “No. He doesn’t deserve to be punished, and neither does anyone else in jail right now. So you’re going to get them out?”
“Yes.” She took me by the hands and lifted me up out of the chair. “Will you help me?”
“I don’t know what I can do,” I admitted. “But if you can teach me, then yes, I’ll do anything that I can.”
Morrigan introduced me to her companions who were helping her, starting with the two bird-men she’d sent to grab me, who weren’t big on chatting. They were karasu tengu, crow demons, and they had Japanese names that I quickly forgot, because they were followed by a whole line of other magikin, from Fae to pookhas and even a few dwarves. Before long, my head was spinning, and there was no way that I could keep track of all of them, so I just smiled and nodded.
Most of the Fae hadn’t been to the mortal world in almost two centuries, and most of the magikin weren’t old enough to have ever come to visit, so they all had a lot of questions for me. Morrigan had some spies of her own who had told her things like the trial in the Court that day (although I didn’t know how she figured out who my dad was), but when it came to the details, it turned out that I had a lot of personal experience that others didn’t have. I had to sit down and sketch out the layout of the castle from memory, to help with the plans for the jailbreak, and I also got quizzed on all kinds of gossip on people I barely even knew. Rosa had been the type to keep track of social gatherings in the Faerie Court, not me.
Morrigan also asked me about the Unseelie I knew in town who might be able to help us. I wasn’t sure who would be up for breaking into the castle, but I dutifully listed the names and addresses of everyone I’d met at meetings with my mom, and she sent off messengers to track them down.
Not for the first time, I wished that I had a cell phone. Rosa got one when she was sixteen and started driving, but my parents had told me that I wasn’t mature enough for a phone of my own, and I didn’t really need one for emergencies since I’d always be with them or Rosa anyway. When Mom took us into hiding, she’d given up her old phone for a burner that wouldn’t be easily traced back to her, but she still had refused to get me one of my own. Now instead of having a handy device that could pull up contact information for my mom’s friends, I had to try remembering things on my own, and I didn’t do a very good job.
“But make sure that you find Elizabeth Burbage,” I said. I could write down her address clearly from memory, because Mom and I had stayed with her family for a month and a half. “She’s a pookha and she goes by Zil. She’ll definitely want to break into the castle. I think she’s got some experience in covert operations.”
Usually adults talked down to me and found it amusing when I used my extensive vocabulary (gleaned from a lifetime of reading books well above my grade level), but Morrigan smiled and thanked me like an equal. Although she looked pretty intimidating, I got more comfortable the more time I spent with her, and I eagerly told her about everything that had happened in my life in the past few months. She wasn’t just interested in the magic that I’d done with Mom—she also showed sympathy when I told her about my whole family splitting up, and how much I missed school, and my fears of having to repeat the seventh grade after months of being absent.
“I don’t think they should hold you back just because of your
mom,” the Fae said with a shake of her head. “That’s hardly fair. And you’re such a driven young woman, you really belong in a gifted program or something.”
I blushed. No one had ever called me a woman before. “Well, in elementary school my teacher did suggest that I could skip a grade, but my parents said that I would have a hard time making friends if everyone was older than me. I do extra work when my teachers give it to me but most of them don’t have time to do anything special.” I looked down at the ground. “I wanted to go to a different school, actually, so I could be around more humans. I didn’t like magic, because I liked everything to be logical. I never would have guessed that I had any magic of my own.”
Morrigan gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’s hard to adapt when your whole world changes, I know. I still pose like a queen out of old habits, even though I don’t have that kind of power anymore, and I don’t really want it. But you don’t have to give up being smart just because you’re part Fae. You can find a way to use your brains and your magic to do what you really want. What do you want?”
I curled up in the chair again, pulling my feet underneath me and wrapping my arms around my knees. “I wanted to be a doctor, like my human dad. So I could help people. Mom told me that there’s magical ways of healing people, too, but a lot of those aren’t scientifically tested. And it’s hard to do that because magic can affect all of the races differently. What works on a faeriekin doesn’t always work on a human.”
Morrigan raised her eyebrows. “It sounds like researchers need to explore those questions more. The kind of researchers who could balance out the rigors of the scientific method with the power of magic by using good experimental designs. They’d have to be pretty creative thinkers to solve the problem of studying magic in a laboratory setting.”
I looked up at her. “Do you mean, someone like me? That sounds like a really big job. Nobody could do all that by themselves.”
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