"Friend of yours?" Lily asked. She was pleased that her voice sounded light. A day ago, the sight of a monkey statue climbing off a wall would have sent her running for her medicine.
"I've known the professors my whole life," Tye said. He waved at them as he and Lily crossed through the arch toward Prospect Avenue. "After my mother died, the gargoyles pretty much adopted me."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I mean, about your mother."
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He shrugged but didn't meet her eyes. "It was a long time ago."
She wanted to reach out and take Tye's hand. She didn't quite dare. Instead she walked silently beside him down the sidewalk. Whispers danced in her head, and she brushed the hedges in front of the eating clubs with her fingertips. The whispers spiked into a croon.
"Used to sneak into the classrooms to sleep near the gargoyles," he said. "And I ate a lot of picnics on rooftops. Endured a lot of sunburns. And rain. When your family is gargoyles, you get rained on a lot."
"You slept in classrooms?" Lily asked. "Why didn't the Old Boys take you in? They had to know you were here."
"After the dragon attacked ... well, after that, the Old Boys had less enthusiasm for the magic world, yours truly included," Tye said. "As soon as I was old enough to understand, I kind of took it personally. And I did a few things I'm not proud of. Well, except for the time I nailed their shoes to the ceiling of Vineyard Club. That was rather awesome."
Lily slowed in front of the club. She'd never sneaked in anywhere, not even Grandpa's closet when she'd known it had held birthday presents. (Mom had peeked, reasoning that her brain hiccups would wipe out the memory anyway so it hardly counted.) This, however, was not like peeking at birthday presents, and Grandpa was likely to be much more pissed. "What if they didn't all go to Forbes?"
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He trotted toward the door. "Just act like you belong," he said, "which you do."
Squashing down her nerves, she followed him inside.
Silence pressed down on her as the croon of the plants faded. She was shocked that she missed it. She was also acutely aware of the lack of direct sunlight on her skin. Another dryad thing? she wondered.
"Lily?" Tye said.
Standing in the foyer, she tried to adjust to being inside. "Sorry," she said. She pointed toward the stairwell behind the grand staircase. "Downstairs."
They crossed under an oil painting of monklike men at an ornate table. The austere group seemed to watch them pass. Lily felt her heart beat faster. Tye was wrong--she didn't officially belong yet. Her application hadn't been processed. All she had was a promise. She wouldn't really belong until she had that acceptance letter in her hand.
She nodded at the wood-paneled walls. "They keep their swords in there. Secret compartments."
Tye stopped and ran his hands over one of the walls.
"There's probably a hidden"--she heard a click--"latch."
He opened it and whistled low.
Lily peered in over his shoulder. Knives and swords filled every inch. She saw jeweled hilts and plain black serrated blades and sharp foils. Tye checked a second compartment. It held axes and throwing stars, plus more hooks and slots for blades--mostly empty. The third cabinet was packed with
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jars and packets. "Wolfsbane for werewolves." He pointed. "Garlic for vampires." He checked a silk packet. "Four-leaf clover?"
"For what? Leprechauns? Don't tell me there really are leprechauns."
He was frowning at the clover.
"Seriously? 'They're always after me Lucky Charms'? And did you just say 'werewolves' and 'vampires'?"
Tye replaced the packet and closed the cabinet door. "The four-leaf-clover thing is a myth--the gargoyles should have told the knights. Not a good sign if the knights have stopped listening to the gargoyles."
"Mmm," she said. "Never a good sign if people stop listening to gargoyles." She shot a look at the front door. "Can we move faster, please?"
He executed a mock bow. "After you, my lady."
She led him to the stairs. They tiptoed down past the black-and-white photos of former Vineyard classes. "I think the room's pretty secret," Lily said in a whisper. "Jake didn't seem to know it was here."
"Jake?"
"Mr. Mayfair's grandson," she said.
"Oh, right. Blond pretty-boy."
"He's not a 'pretty-boy,'" she said. "He's a knight." Tye raised both eyebrows so she changed the subject. "The drainer looks straight out of a cheesy mad-scientist movie. Tubes, needles, whirring noises ... it's like a Rube Goldberg device made out
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of lab equipment." Reaching the taproom, she pointed. The door was ajar, exactly as she'd left it.
Beside her, Tye stopped.
"What is it?" she asked. She glanced at the stairs, half expecting an army of knights to burst into the taproom with swords flashing through the air.
Softly, he said, "I want to be wrong."
"Oh," she said.
Side by side, they stared at the door.
"You know," Lily said, "in a horror movie, this would be the point where the idiot teenagers get eaten by the monsters." She waited for Tye to make a witty reply. He didn't. She added, "I never really liked horror movies."
"Me neither," he said. He squared his shoulders and strode forward. She entered close behind him. Above, a single bulb swung on a string, sending shadows skittering around the room and over the shelves of bottles.
Lily watched Tye's face pale as he scanned the shelves. "This ... it's bad?" she asked.
He swallowed and nodded. "Very bad," he said. "Do you know how many creatures had to die to make a collection this size?"
Die?
"The knights had to drain to death dozens of magic creatures to fill all these bottles," Tye said. He waved his hand at the shelves. "The knights are no different from the Feeders they fight! They've become another kind of Feeder."
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Grandpa was not a Feeder. "Maybe no one died. Mr. Mayfair was only going to skim the excess from me." She pointed to the drainer with its knot of tubes. "It could be like a blood bank for magic."
He shook his head. "This ... this is evil."
"Grandpa isn't evil! He'd never hurt anyone." He'd said the procedure was safe. He wouldn't have put her at risk. Lying to her about her heritage was one thing; endangering her life ... He wouldn't do it.
Tye opened his mouth and then closed it.
Lily glared at him. "Grandpa is one of the good guys. They're knights." Grandpa was a florist--you couldn't ask for nicer than works-with-flowers. He was even kind to dandelions.
Tye lifted up a bottle and removed the stopper. He tipped the bottle over and spilled a drop of silver liquid. It beaded on the shelf like mercury. "Pure magic. There's no way the gargoyles know about this. And the council ... I have to tell the council."
Lily felt her voice dry up in her throat as she stared at the silver dot. "That's magic?" she squeaked. It looked exactly like ... She cut off the thought before she could complete it.
He nodded. "In its liquid form, yeah. This ... this thing must produce some chemical reaction to keep the magic from evaporating into the air." He prodded at the glass tubes. "I should smash it."
She caught his arm. "Don't! They'll know someone was
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in here. Besides, there must be an explanation for all of this." Grandpa could explain. Yes, she just needed to talk to him.
"There's no explanation that could justify this," Tye said. But he quit poking the drainer. Instead, he pocketed the bottle of magic. "The council will want proof," he said. He then wiped away the drop of magic on the shelf with his sleeve. It smeared silver.
Lily tentatively touched the smudge. She studied the silver that dotted her fingertips. She couldn't deny it: It looked exactly like her and Mom's medicine.
Impossible, she thought.
Footsteps thumped from the top of the stairs. Tye swore softly and colorfully. He spun around as if looking for a place
to hide. There wasn't one.
"Come on," he said, pulling her elbow.
They dashed out of the hidden room and wove among tables, chairs, and the jukebox. The footsteps began to come down the stairs. Lily thought of her mother on those stairs, pausing to look at a photograph. She slowed. "You go," she said to Tye.
Tye released her elbow. "What?"
Lily touched her hands together and felt the silver liquid slide between her fingertips. She couldn't leave yet. "I'll delay them," she said. "I belong, right? I'll be fine. Go." Without waiting for a response, she darted across the taproom to the stairs. She pounded her feet on the steps as loudly as she could, hoping to hide any sound of Tye.
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On the fourth step, she smacked into Jake. He grabbed her arms to keep her from falling backward. "Whoa, slow down!" Jake said.
He released her, and she gripped his wrists as if she needed him for balance. "Sorry," she said. Her eyes slid to the wall with all the photos.
Jake flipped his cell phone open. "Got her," he reported. "She's fine. She returned to the club." Closing the phone, he asked Lily, "Where have you been? Why didn't you follow us?"
"I ... I chickened out," she said. "A few hours ago, I didn't know any of this was real, and now a battle? I've never even seen a fistfight. College is supposed to have professors and exams and roommates, not dragons and knights!" She waved her hand at the black-and-white photos of Princeton knights. She scanned the wall, looking for the picture that had caught her mother's eye earlier. Mom had stopped right about ... Lily spotted it: a class photo with a familiar face. Smack-dab in the center of the photo was a young man in an oxford shirt and khakis who looked exactly like a younger version of Grandpa. He was surrounded by men and women ... except there had been no women at Princeton when her grandfather had been a student, and the hair and outfits in this photo were from the wrong decade. That man couldn't have been her grandfather, though he looked almost identical to him.
Grandpa did have more secrets, she thought.
"Are you all right?" Jake asked.
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Lily pointed at the photo. "That's my father," she said. "William Carter. He's Grandpa's son." Her voice sounded an octave too high, but she couldn't stop it.
Her father was Grandpa's son, which meant that Mom wasn't Grandpa's daughter. Her father was Grandpa's blood relation, which meant that Mom wasn't.
Her father was human, which meant that Mom ... wasn't.
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CHAPTER Nine
Mom wasn't human.
Grandpa had lied to her. He'd lied about things so basic that Lily didn't even know how to process the information. She leaned heavily against the stairwell wall.
"Lily?" Jake said.
At least now she had an answer to how she'd survived: Grandpa hadn't fed her and Mom medicine; he'd fed them magic. Her stomach lurched. "I think I'm going to be sick." Lily clapped her hands over her mouth, and she barreled past Jake up the stairs. She ran under the eyes of the oil paintings and past the hidden compartments, the grand piano, and the marble fireplace. With Jake jogging behind her, she burst out the front door of the club.
Outside, she fell to her knees on the grass. Amber light from the setting sun poured over the back of her neck, and
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she heard the whispered voices of the lawn and the trees and the bushes. She buried her fingers in the grass. Green blades curled around her knuckles and crooned to her. Her chest loosened, and she could breathe again.
She heard Jake on the path behind her. "Lily, are you all right?" he asked.
"No, I'm not all right!" None of this was "all right." The woman she'd spent every day of her life with was a dryad, and her grandfather--the bedrock of her life--had intentionally lied to her about all of it. "I trusted him! Believed in him!"
"Who?" Jake asked.
"My grandfather, the liar," she said.
"Your grandfather is a noble man," Jake said. "A hero--"
Lily interrupted him. "You barely know him." She wondered how well she even knew him. Wrapped around her fingers, the grass squeezed tighter.
Jake squatted beside her. "Lily, are you okay?" He sounded concerned, as if he hadn't been the one to push her away on the chapel plaza. Since when did he care? She was the "monster," wasn't she?
"I'm not going to puke on you, if that's what you're worried about," Lily said.
"I'm not ... I didn't mean ...," he said. He reminded her of a puppy who'd had his nose smacked. She felt a twinge of guilt. Jake wasn't the one who had turned her world inside out and upside down and then (for good measure) shaken it vigorously.
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She unwound her fingers from the grass. The blades continued to rub against her like kittens that wanted to be petted. Lily thought of how Mom always treated the plants in the flower shop like pets. She'd coo and croon to the roses and daisies. Lily felt a hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat, and she choked it back.
"Do you ... Are you feeling better?" Jake asked.
"My mom ...," she began. She stopped. "I need to talk to Grandpa. Is the battle over?"
He shot a look at the sidewalk. "Shh!"
After all the lies, for them to expect her to care about protecting their secrets ... She saw Jake's expression, and she sighed. "Sorry," she said. "It's not your fault that my home life is even more messed up than I'd thought." She wondered how much of the truth Mom knew, or remembered.
"The fighting just started," he said in a low voice, checking to be sure he couldn't be overheard. "If we're quick, we won't miss much. But if you're too scared--"
"No, I'm fine now. Let's go to Forbes." She got to her feet. It occurred to her that she'd been stupid to come outside so quickly. She should have delayed in the stairwell until she'd been certain that Tye had had enough time to reach safety.
Jake trotted down the sidewalk, and Lily trailed behind. Street lamps flickered on up and down Prospect Avenue--the sky was beginning to darken to steel blue. She tried to subtly scan the area for Tye. She hoped he was long gone. As she followed Jake up the steps to the 1879 Hall arch, she
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wondered what would happen when the council saw the bottle of magic.
"You really didn't know about this, about who you are?" Jake said.
She felt tears prick her eyes. Blinking fast, she looked away from Jake and at the monkey gargoyles on the arch. They remained stone, but Lily imagined the blank gray eyes watching her. "Did you?" she asked. "When you met me, could you tell?"
"Not a hint," he said. "I mean, it's not as if you have a tail or scales ... do you?"
She glared at him. "No!" Picking up her pace, she marched through the arch.
He caught her hand. "Listen, Lily. ... Earlier, by the chapel, I shouldn't have pushed you away," he said. "That was wrong of me. I thought ... I failed you, and I'm sorry."
She met his intensely blue eyes.
"You're not a ...," he said. "You're an extraordinary person."
"Extraordinarily freakish, you mean."
"Other people would hide or deny, but you want answers. That's extraordinary."
"Uh, thanks." With him looking at her like that, her legs felt like Jell-O. He wouldn't be so nice, she reminded herself, if he knew you'd sneaked into the club with Tye. "I ran from the battle."
"Don't blame yourself," he said. "You aren't trained yet. You'll be one of us in no time. You're a descendant of Richard
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Carter. The fact that he raised you should compensate for any taint."
By "taint" he clearly meant Mom. Lily looked away from his angelic face. As they walked through Prospect Gardens, she kept to the center of the flagstone walk, as far as possible from the tulips and the rosebushes to avoid attracting their attention. Jake considered her tainted. Maybe she was.
Jake was struggling to piece together what sounded like an explanation. "I should not have let the ... by the chapel ... it was just ..."
"Your parents?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I'm sorry," Lily said. They walked by a trio of women, young alums, whose eyes fixed on Jake admiringly. One of them whispered to her friends, and all three giggled. Jake either ignored them or didn't notice.
Changing the subject, he said, "The secrets are necessary."
She didn't reply. There was no point in arguing with him about that. Grandpa was the one who had hurt her with his secrets. As they passed the 40th Reunion tent, music poured out from the fenced-in area. She smelled cheeseburgers from their barbecue along with the omnipresent smell of beer, and she glimpsed orange-clad alums and their families chatting, laughing, and eating. No one seemed at all concerned that there was a battle with fantastical creatures occurring across campus. "How do you keep it a secret from all of them?" she asked.
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"You'd be surprised what it's possible to hide if you have the resources," he said with pride in his voice. "We've had generations of practice at hiding this secret. See up ahead." He pointed.
Campus security cars and construction vehicles were arrayed across a street. She saw an ambulance and a fire truck in front of a Wawa market. Police cones and yellow do-not-cross tape blocked off an intersection.
"Water main broke," Jake explained as he ducked under the yellow tape and then held it up for her to duck underneath as well.
"It did? Because of the attack?"
He shook his head. "We have a special arrangement with campus security whenever a Feeder is spotted. Civilians are evacuated immediately, and campus security will help them 'remember' what they think they saw by providing a more plausible explanation and, if necessary, 'proof.' The area is then cordoned off. In this case, we needed a large explanation." She noticed that guards were posted along the yellow tape, plus there was a second layer of security guards closer to the dorm. "Containment is key." He flashed an ID at one of the campus police and said, "She's with me."
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