Behind Riordan, two of the mage elders frowned. My guess was they’d opposed keeping the school open. Figures. They could send their rich babies to Yale or Harvard or any other Ivy League school while preparing them for the magical world with private tutors.
Immediately, I felt shame for thinking the worst. They had a legitimate reason to be concerned about the safety of every student, and since we were required by law to attend four years of school if we wanted to keep our abilities, it wasn’t like we could just leave.
“Until the culprit has been found, no student shall leave school grounds without at least two sentinels, and then only with staff approval.”
The announcement finally broke the silence. Everyone, it seemed, spoke out at once in protest.
“Enough!”
The Great Fenrir’s voice boomed across the vast room. Like Riordan, he didn’t need a mic for his voice to thunder across the vast auditorium. All at once, everyone shut the hell up and sat back down. The giant bear shifter rose from his seat alongside the rest of the panel and walked to the edge of the stage.
“This is not a decision made lightly. Were our numbers compared to the humans, supernaturals would be classified as an endangered species. Every life, whether fae, shifter, mage, or vampire is precious. This virus—this plague—threatens all of us.”
“Except mages and fae,” someone argued from the back. I twisted around in my seat to try and find the speaker, as did many others, but no one seemed to know who had spoken and I didn’t recognize the voice.
Oberon rose. Instead of silence, wistful sighs filled the auditorium. Even in dire times, people still swooned over the faerie king. “The children of Tir na Nog may not be susceptible to this disease,” he said, his voice all around us, not booming but merely there, as if he were speaking in my ear at conversational distance, “but I assure you, we have no desire to see the humans in our care succumb to this horrible fate, no more than we wish to witness the deaths of our closest friends.” His gaze cut to Nanoq, lingering before returning to the audience. “We feel the loss of each mortal we’ve touched, too many bright souls snuffed out well before their time.”
“As for Miss Gilroy, the doctors have managed to arrest the disease’s progression. Anything more, I cannot say. Our best alchemists are doing everything in their power to develop a cure,” Riordan said. “Until then, we ask for your patience. If any of you need to talk about your concerns, or even about ideas for how to protect ourselves, my door is open. Dismissed.”
“Do you think all the leaders will be staying?” Pilar asked once we managed to get outside and away from the throng.
“I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, they did travel from who knows where across the world.” Ben shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Seems a waste to leave after only one day.”
“I imagine they’ll be put up in staff housing, don’t you think, Lia?” Pilar paused a moment, then called again, “Liadan?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Lia startling out of a daze. When I followed where her gaze had been focused, I spotted the fae delegation. I caught Dain looking back at our group with an intensity in his eyes that was definitely not meant for me.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought. There’s a lot of emotion in the air.”
I slung an arm around her shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “This has got to be hard for empaths like you.”
“I can handle it.”
“Never said you couldn’t,” I agreed. “Still, what do you say about a musical and pizza?”
Her tight shoulders relaxed, but not before she cast another quick glance toward the fae lords. Then she looked at me, a forced smile on her face.
“I think that sounds divine.”
I didn’t look forward to confinement on campus, but we all knew we might as well make the best of it.
And I’d yet to find a sour mood that couldn’t be cured by Mama Mia!
21
Understanding
The whole world was upside down, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I hated feeling helpless.
So, I focused on the things I could work on, like my friends. Pizza and movies had helped cheer Lia up, but there was still something I couldn’t put my finger on. Something she was bottling up and withholding from us. In time, I hoped, she would finally sit down and let us help her. Until then, I’d be the friend she needed.
Which reminded me that there was one more friendship I needed to mend, and it was high time I stopped putting it off. I waited until Thursday evening when I would be alone. Gabriel wasn’t due to return until morning, and Sam was spending the night with Ash off-campus, which meant I had all the time necessary to do something I definitely shouldn’t do.
After confirming the time on the clock again, I took a deep breath and brandished my crystal wand in one hand while eyeing the obnoxious parrot in front of me. Ama loathed me on principle, and my fingers bore the proof of how much the little bird hated me. Coaxing her out of the cage had not been easy.
“Gabriel wouldn’t approve of what I plan to do to you, but I think this is the only way to resolve the shit between us. And it is shit, because you’re his best friend and he’d do anything to make you happy. But you haven’t been a good friend to him lately.”
Ama leaned forward, mantling her wings, ready to fly at me. If she attacked, I’d have no choice but to suck it up from behind a barrier and wait for her to finish. I didn’t dare hurt Gabe’s baby.
Because she definitely was his baby. She’d just turned sixteen over the summer, and she’d spent every single day of those sixteen years in Gabriel’s care. He’d raised and cared for her as long as some people cared for their human children.
Praying I wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of my life, I dragged a golden stream of faerie dust from my Dream Box and sent it wafting toward Ama as Pilar had coached me when we practiced the glamour. The strands of glitter wrapped around her in waves of gilded light and suffused her tiny body with my essence. She shrieked and beat at it with her wings, lifting off the couch to take flight.
I closed my eyes and pulled the dreams from her little mind, weaving those with magic and love until the ribbons of glamour coalesced into something tangible. Something real. Something that wasn’t quite Amaterasu as I knew her, but the Ama she could have been if she were born human, or better yet, sidhe.
When the light faded, an orange and green sun conure no longer sat on the couch. She’d been replaced by a young woman with frightened tears glistening in her gray eyes. Her hair was the prettiest shade of yellow blonde I’d ever seen, straight and sleek down her shoulders against a gold-to-red ombre dress. And she wore elbow-length green evening gown gloves on her dainty hands. Her ears remained pointed, elf-like.
She looked Japanese, her skin fair and eyes surrounded by bold orange shadow. As a human, Ama was truly gorgeous. I couldn’t determine her physical age, but she looked much younger than I expected her to be. Hadn’t Gabriel said she’d reached half her life span already? She didn’t appear older than me.
The moment I moved, she jerked away and huddled in the corner of the couch, crouching barefoot on the cushions. “What did you do to me?”
“I made you like me. For a little while.”
“Why? Why did you do this to me? Why do you take everything away from me?”
“What?”
“You took everything away. You took my mother from me, and then you took my father, too.”
I blinked. “I…what?”
And then she burst into tears, weeping into her hands, every sound the involuntary choking of someone who definitely wasn’t faking their anguish. Soul-deep, awful little sobs that shook her entire little body.
Bewildered, I stood in front of her with my wand balanced between my thumb and forefinger, helpless and more confused than ever. Without her sharp beak and painful little talons, she looked more delicate than before.
Her entire body shuddered. “I miss my mother. I miss her so much.�
�
“Jada?”
A ragged breath came out of her that sounded like a yes, but I couldn’t be sure.
In all the time that Gabriel and Jada had been apart, I’d never realized there was a silent victim suffering from their breakup. It hit me like a thunderbolt, and I felt like an absolute idiot for failing to see it until now.
Hadn’t Ama always loathed me?
Hadn’t she flown right to Jada at Gabriel’s house?
Hadn’t I once ruefully thought to myself that Ama had probably loved his ex?
I sighed and sat on the edge of the cushion beside her. “Ama, I’m sorry. I’m stupid. We were stupid.” When I raised one hand to touch her, she scurried aside, skittish, wild-eyed. I froze, hand still out. “I won’t hurt you. I’d never hurt you. Even if you weren’t…” I swallowed the hard knot in my throat that formed like a lump of cold lead. “Even if you weren’t his little girl. I’m a sidhe. We don’t hurt people. You know that, don’t you?”
My words didn’t ease her terror. Her chest moved so fast with tiny, panicked breaths. I waited before I dared to move closer. “I never meant to take him away from you.”
“He never reads to me anymore. He only wants to be with you. Then he made my mother leave.”
“Not because of me.”
“He did.”
I studied her. Ama had no reason to lie, which meant anything the little bird-girl said to me had to be her honest perception of the events. “What makes you believe it was because of me?”
“You were all they talked about.”
“What did they say about me?”
“Mother said he loved you, and he said he didn’t. She said he wanted to get home fast to be with you. She called him a liar and hit him.”
I stiffened. Gabriel wouldn’t have omitted that, would he? “Did you understand all of these things even then?” Or was it the magic of my glamour that expanded her intelligence and allowed her to grasp and comprehend things she’d witnessed as a bird?
God. I thought of all the times we’d made out in front of her.
Ugh, we’d had sex in the same room with her, too.
Ama wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist and shook her head. “Only now. I knew their feelings, and I felt their emotions when you were near. You made my mother sad.”
“I never meant to make her sad. I swear.” I moved closer. She shrank away again, jerking into the arm of the couch. “Please,” I said in a gentler voice. “I promise on my love for your father that I would never, ever cause you harm. I would hurt myself before I ever hurt you.”
She didn’t shy away from me again, trembling as much she did in her parrot form when I enfolded her in my arms. Her tiny frame felt too fragile, and all I wanted was to protect her.
“I’m sorry, Ama. I’ll talk to him, okay?”
“He won’t listen. He doesn’t love me.”
“What? Oh, no, sweetie, listen. Gabriel loves you so very much. When you bite him, it hurts more than his fingers. It hurts him here.” I leaned back and placed my hand over my heart. “He doesn’t understand why you won’t play with him now. Why do you bite him?”
She tucked her chin. “He’s never with me when you aren’t around anymore. I’m not enough for him anymore.”
“Oh, if you saw how much it hurt and terrified him when you were gone, you’d know you are. He barely slept the entire time. All that mattered to him was knowing you were somewhere safe.” The man had cried.
Ama toyed with her dress hem. It was fluffy like chiffon. I hadn’t done that, so it must have come from her thoughts. “I miss him.”
“Ama, do you realize that if you don’t show it, Sam may convince Gabriel to let him take you back to Texas?”
She nodded quietly.
“Is that what you want?”
“No. I want to be with Daddy.”
“And he wants you to be with him too. I’m sorry I ever made you feel that I could replace you.”
And I knew exactly what to do to right this wrong and mend their broken family.
I paced the floor while waiting for Jada to arrive, wondering if she would arrive.
“How much longer will I be this way?”
“Until midnight,” I replied. “I put as much faerie dust into the spell as I could without the risk of leaving you this way, uh, semi-permanently.” I needed more practice at differentiating between the various durations of a temporary time and semi-permanence.
“I miss my wings.”
“I know, sweetie.”
Ama toyed with the edge of her dress. “But I like this.”
I continuously fought against the urge to embrace Ama. I wanted to hug her because it felt so damned good to be solving our issues, but even more because she was adorable.
When the bell rang, Ama and I both flinched like skittish parakeets. She jumped in place on the couch, and I tripped over my own feet. “Wait here,” I told her when she rose to follow me.
I squeezed into the hall to meet Jada. She was dressed for duty in slacks and a dark blouse, wearing her badge clipped to a leather Prada belt.
“All right. What’s going on with Ama that Gabriel couldn’t resolve?”
“I made her human. Well, sidhe, technically. For a little while.”
Jada’s brows shot up so fast I expected them to launch from her face. “What?”
“I did a Beast-to-Man glamour and we talked, really talked, for a good while, and I know why she left and why she’s been upset. She missed you.”
Jada didn’t answer at first. She stared at the door, as if she could see through it with her raven eyes. “You’re telling me that Ama can speak to us.”
“Yes. That’s what I wanted to tell you first before you come inside. She’s nervous and she missed you, and Gabriel has no idea I did this.”
“All right.”
I moved aside and let her enter ahead of me. She strode inside, looking less confident than I remembered, only to stop in her tracks and stare across the room at the sylvan Ama in her glittering orange and red dress.
“Ama?”
Ama chewed her lower lip. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Jada hesitated in front of the couch, and the two watched each other for a moment, both frozen still. Then Jada moved first and dropped to one knee on the cushion. They hugged each other at the same time and clung together for so long I felt like an intruder on their special moment. “Oh, you’re so beautiful. Are you okay like this? It didn’t hurt, did it?”
“It didn’t hurt,” Ama reassured her. “But it is strange to have hands.”
“I bet it is.” Jada rubbed her back then leaned back, sitting on her heels to study Ama’s face. “You look like Gabriel a little.”
And if I was honest about it, she looked a little like Jada too. Though Jada’s chestnut hair was a little too dark, they both had the same silky, pin-straight texture.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” Jada replied. “So much it hurts. I was so happy to see you again in Texas.”
“I thought you didn’t love me anymore. You never come to see me.”
“No, sweetie. I love you, and I’ll always love you. I wanted to see you more than anything, but it just didn’t feel right to intrude on Gabriel’s life anymore.”
“Skylar made you go.”
“No. I made me leave. I did something very stupid, and it meant I wasn’t allowed to visit anymore. But that was my choice.”
Ama blinked a few times. Her gray eyes darted to me. I tried to smile reassuringly. “Can you get along again?”
“I don’t know. I helped him look for you, but that’s up to Gabriel. And if he doesn’t want me to visit, I can’t blame him.”
“I’ll try to talk him into it,” I promised. “I really will.”
“Thank you,” Jada murmured. She hugged Ama tight.
“Can I get you some coffee or something?” I asked.
“I…”
“Seriously.” I put on a smile, hoping it appeared as
sincere as I wanted. “Coffee? Water? Tea?”
“Coffee is fine.”
I hustled into the kitchen and started lattes for us and juice for Ama. I returned to catch the tail-end of a conversation between the two. I quietly passed the mug to Jada and a small cup to Ama.
“I need you to be kinder to…” Jada dragged in a breath and focused on her coffee, staring at the creamy heart I’d poured in the middle. “Your father. Be good to him. He loves you so much. Losing you for just a few weeks hurt him deeper than I ever thought he could suffer, Ama. Please be kind to him.”
“Okay.”
“And to Skylar. None of this is her fault. I was clingy, and awful, and childish. Your father is such a good, wonderful man that I tried to hold on to him even when I knew we weren’t meant to be together anymore.”
“But you love him.”
“Not the way he should be loved. There are different ways to love people. I love you very much. But I love Gabriel the way I love you, because he’s my oldest friend, not the way a mate should be loved.”
“Do you miss him, too?”
“Every day.”
Jada kissed Ama’s cheek, and they talked while I cleaned the kitchen, leaving them be. All the while, I looked at the clock as the minutes ticked down to midnight, and I knew soon she’d be a parrot again. Granting her even a few hours had been exhausting.
“C’mon. Let’s take a photo for posterity. And Gabe.”
“Yes!” Ama cried.
Gabriel had one of his weekly graduate courses tonight, then a shift as a campus sentinel. I didn’t expect him until at least eight in the morning. And honestly, the girls had needed this talk alone without him losing his shit.
After we slid together on the couch with Ama between us, I angled my phone out and snapped a couple photos. Then we waited for the final minutes to wind down.
Unlike the old story of Cinderella, we had no tower to toll the bell at midnight. The digital readout changed on the hour, and on that little soundless tick, glitz and glitter surrounded Ama and my glamour deteriorated. The silk and chiffon disintegrated into feathers and she shrank rapidly in size until all that remained was her parrot body on Jada’s lap.
The Plague Doctor (The Paranormal University Files: Skylar Book 4) Page 18