Enchanted Ivy

by Sarah Beth Durst

  "Um, yeah," Lily said. "Thanks."

  The woman beamed with all her white teeth. "Happy to help!"

  Lily hurried past her. She tried Mom's cell phone one more time and then Grandpa's. Mr. Mayfair should have fetched Lily as well as Mom. She should be there when Grandpa explained why he was bruised and burned. She should make sure Mom was told the truth. It was time.

  On Prospect Avenue, Lily had to stop. She'd walked, not run, across campus, but she was panting anyway. She sucked in air, but it felt as if the oxygen had been leached out of the atmosphere. Her chest felt tight, and her muscles trembled.

  She leaned against a maple tree to catch her breath. She felt the tree's bark against her arms, but she heard nothing. No static. No chimes. Just ordinary noises. She remembered how she'd felt with the trees at Forbes, as if the magic were

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  pouring out of her. Maybe it had been. Maybe she should have taken a dose of medicine this morning instead of just a bagel.

  Lily continued down Prospect Avenue, stumbling twice. She felt a headache pinch between her eyes as she entered Vineyard Club. She hoped Mom had remembered her medicine this morning. No, she corrected. Not medicine. Magic. She wondered how low Mom's magic levels were--she'd never caused the plants in the flower shop to dance. She had to be running on nearly empty every day.

  One of the Old Boys lounging on a red leather couch rose as if to stop her, but a second one nodded. She recognized him from her first meeting with the Old Boys. "She's one of us," the man said. The first Old Boy sat down and picked up his newspaper. He continued to watch her, though, as the second man flipped open a cell phone and said, "Richard's granddaughter is here."

  Almost immediately, Jake emerged from the stairwell to the taproom. "Jake, have you seen ...," she began. God, he looked terrible--or at least as terrible as a golden boy could look. His eyes were puffed and red, and his skin looked pale and waxy. "Are you okay?"

  "First time helping with cleanup ...," he mumbled, and then he darted for a trash can in the corner of the room. Clutching the sides, he vomited into the can. He straightened after a moment and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Nice," he said, to either himself or the trash can. "Very manly."

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  "Do you want some water or ...?" she asked.

  He flashed a weak smile at her. "I'm fine. Fine." And then he scowled. "What were you thinking last night? You were supposed to stay hidden."

  She flushed bright red. "I thought I could help." Instead, she'd barely helped herself. She should have ordered the shrubs to stretch faster or the trees to seal bark around her and the knights. If she'd been more specific, maybe she could have been more effective. As it was, she'd only succeeded in getting people hurt. "Is everyone ... all right? Is my grandfather here? Have you seen my mother?"

  "Ask my grandfather," Jake said. "He's downstairs, running the clean--" His face contorted, and midsentence, he dove for the trash can again. She started to approach him, but he waved her away. "Don't watch."

  She lingered another minute in case he needed help, and then she headed downstairs. She slowed as she got closer to the taproom. Odd noises drifted up the stairwell, groans and growls. Lily wondered what exactly had caused Jake to vomit. Maybe she should wait upstairs.

  But Mom could be down there, too.

  Fixing thoughts of Mom firmly in her mind, Lily reached the bottom of the stairs and halted. "Oh, my God," she breathed.

  The taproom was crammed full of monsters. All of them were tied, blindfolded, and gagged. Most lay on the floor. A few were tied to chairs. To one side, three men in elbow-length gloves were stacking full trash bags. She vaguely

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  recognized their faces from Forbes. Each of the men looked at her and then returned to his task.

  "Mr. Mayfair?" she asked tentatively.

  One of them pointed to the hidden room, now wide open. She stepped toward it and peered inside. Lying on the wood floor, with shackles from the chair stretched around his delicate legs, was a unicorn.

  Between streaks of dirt and dried blood, his flank was mother-of-pearl. He was the kind of white that proved that white is composed of all colors. He shimmered beneath the grime like a pale rainbow about to disappear.

  With a rasping breath, the unicorn lifted his head an inch off the floor and opened his eyes. They were so blue that they nearly glowed, but the lids were ringed with pus and blood. Shutting his eyes, he sagged his head back down on his silver hooves. The shackles clanged as they shifted.

  Standing over him, Mr. Mayfair held steady a syringe that was plunged into the unicorn's hind leg. The drainer glugged and whirred. Silver liquid flowed through the tubes and into a bottle.

  As the level in the bottle rose, the unicorn twitched. He flailed his head, cutting the air with his horn. His horn, which should have been luminescent gold, was black with blood. Knights' blood, Lily reminded herself. Maybe even Grandpa's.

  Mr. Mayfair consulted his watch, and then with one hand still holding the syringe steady, he deftly replaced the full bottle with an empty one. Lily could see every vein in the

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  unicorn's neck pulsing. The ragged breathing hurt to hear. He sounded as if his throat had been raked with nails.

  She flinched as the unicorn spasmed. His head lolled forward onto the floor. Lily waited for Mr. Mayfair to stop. But he didn't. The unicorn's shakes lessened until his body merely vibrated. And then the beautiful beast was still.

  He must be all right, she thought. Mr. Mayfair had said it was a safe procedure. He knew when to stop. The unicorn was only resting, right?

  Mr. Mayfair squeezed the remaining drops from the tube, and then he removed the syringe from the unicorn's flank. He turned off the drainer, and then he discarded the needle. "Ready," he said.

  The three men bustled past Lily into the room. She watched, glued in place, as they removed the shackles from the unicorn's legs. Released, he didn't move. Together, the three men hefted the unicorn up and carried him out into the taproom. They laid him down onto tarp-size black garbage bag.

  Lily stared at the unicorn's chest, waiting for it to rise. It didn't.

  The men closed the garbage bag around him, and then they heaved the unicorn's body onto the pile of other bags. Lily felt her knees shake. All those bags ...

  Stripping off his latex gloves, Mr. Mayfair joined Lily in the taproom. "You look pale," he said in his cultured voice. "Would you care to sit down?"

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  It was one thing to watch Jake kill the troll that had been about to kill her, but this ... She kept thinking of the council unicorn, luminous in the sunlight. She forced herself to picture Grandpa prone on the lawn with the unicorn about to strike. "I was looking for my mother. And my grandpa." Her voice sounded thin to her ears.

  "This is not a pretty sight, I know," Mr. Mayfair said. "But keep in mind that these are monsters, no matter what the storybooks say. They cannot be allowed to continue to prey on humanity. At least this way, their deaths serve a purpose."

  Her eyes slid to the pile of garbage bags.

  "Our only edge against them is the magic," he said. "It enhances our natural skills and enables us to hold our own in battle against supernatural beings. The death of these monsters ... their magic will help us fight to keep humans safer."

  The flasks, she remembered. They hadn't drunk a toast; they'd drunk magic. She bet Tye didn't know that. She wondered what he would say.

  "We need to do this," Mr. Mayfair said. "We're fighting a war, and we are not winning." For the first time since she'd met him, he sounded troubled.

  "Oh?" she said. She knew her response was inadequate, but she felt as if her mind was shrieking. She hadn't asked for this, not any of it. She didn't want to know about Feeders and wars and ...

  "Always before, Feeders were loners. We could hunt

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  them down one by one. But for the first time in generations, Feeders have united under a single leader, and the hunted are now the
hunters. ... But this is my problem, not yours." His eyes were full of sympathy. "I know all of this must be a terrible shock to you."

  She nodded and thought that was the greatest understatement she'd ever heard.

  "I'm afraid I have difficult news for you," he said.

  Lily felt her heart freeze. "Mom?" she said. She scanned the taproom. This sight must have traumatized her mom beyond belief.

  He shook his head. "Your mother is fine. She's upstairs."

  Lily sighed in relief.

  "It's your grandfather," Mr. Mayfair said. "His injuries were severe."

  "Where is he? Will he be okay? What's wrong?" Her mind caught in a loop, repeating, Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  "Come with me," Mr. Mayfair said.

  He led her up the stairs to the main room and then up the grand staircase, past more oil paintings and more stained-glass windows. Her heart was pounding. Please, be okay, she thought.

  At the end of a corridor, Mr. Mayfair opened a plain white door. Lily rushed inside. Grandpa was tucked into a hospital bed with an IV in his arm and an oxygen mask over his face. Bandages covered his left arm. His eyes were closed.

  Beside him sat Mom. She turned when Lily entered the

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  room. Lily saw that her eyes were so pink and puffy that they looked bruised. "Oh, Lily," Mom said. She held out her hands.

  Lily ran to her.

  Mom wrapped her arms around Lily's waist and pressed her cheek against Lily's stomach. Lily stroked her orange hair.

  Behind her, Mr. Mayfair said, "He slipped into a coma last night."

  This is my fault, Lily thought. If she hadn't shown herself at Forbes ... Lily drew in a shaky breath. She had to hold it together. She kept petting Mom's hair as she stared at Grandpa.

  He looked frail. She'd never seen her grandfather look frail. "What's wrong with him?" Lily asked. "When will he wake?"

  Mr. Mayfair hesitated. "Rose, will you stay with him? Watch him for any change? I'd like a few words with Lily."

  Releasing Lily's waist, Mom laid her head on the edge of the hospital bed. Her fingers wove between Grandpa's fingers. She didn't speak.

  "I'll be right back," Lily told her.

  She followed Mr. Mayfair out of the room and into a study stuffed with antiques. Oriental rugs covered the hardwood floor, and a carved wooden fireplace filled one wall. Other walls held bookcases with gilded leather books. Mr. Mayfair gestured to a leather chair beside a Tiffany dragonfly lamp. He himself went to stand beside a window with his hands clasped behind his back. He looked out onto the street below.

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  Lily didn't sit. "I need the truth," she said. "Is he going to be okay?"

  "The truth is that I don't know. He could wake in five minutes; he could wake in five years." His clasped hands, she noticed, had tightened so that his knuckles were as white as his oxford shirt. "We must brace ourselves for the possibility that he does not wake ever."

  Lily felt as if the walls were leaning in. She sank into the chair. "Ever," she repeated. "But ... it hasn't been that long. You can't have tried everything. He should be in a hospital! There should be doctors! Specialists!"

  "Our facilities here are top-notch," Mr. Mayfair said. "But if we do not see significant improvement in the next twenty-four hours, then yes, we will transfer him to a hospital with specialists in combat injuries."

  She couldn't think. Her brain felt like sludge. Lily sucked in a deep breath, willing herself to stay together. Mom and Grandpa needed her to not fall apart.

  "However, there is a problem." Mr. Mayfair turned from the window. His eyes bored into hers. They were the same brilliant blue as Jake. "Your mother cannot go to a hospital. With her mental problems, it would be frighteningly easy for her to change from visitor to patient, and that would be disastrous. If a doctor examined her ..."

  "Mom's been to doctors before," Lily said. She'd accompanied her on lots of visits.

  "Our doctors," Mr. Mayfair said. "Princeton knights."

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  Lily had never noticed. She tried to remember the degrees on the wall. She hadn't paid attention. It was possible. Grandpa had always picked the doctors and arranged the appointments. For a second, she thought about all those people in on the secret, all keeping everything from her and Mom, but she pushed the anger away to deal with later. "Then she's ... different inside?"

  "Very," Mr. Mayfair said gravely.

  Lily tried to digest that, and then she pushed it away for later, too. "Can she ... stay here?" she asked. She hated the idea of leaving her in a place that wasn't familiar, but Mom couldn't be left alone.

  "There is another option," Mr. Mayfair said. "You could send her home."

  "Home?" Lily repeated. She was certain that he didn't mean Philadelphia and their attic-floor nest of flowers and pillows and sunlight and pottery. He meant the other Princeton.

  "It is what your grandfather wanted," Mr. Mayfair said. "It is why you are here this weekend. Your grandfather believed that your mother's problems are due to her heritage, and that her family might be able to help her, even cure her."

  Lily had begun to think she was done being shocked, but this ... Mr. Mayfair's words exploded like fireworks in her head. She remembered how Grandpa had said there was hope. This must have been what he'd meant.

  "He had intended to explain it himself, but ..." Mr.

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  Mayfair gestured toward the hall. "He wouldn't want you to wait. You must know that your mother is worsening. The magic doses aren't enough. If she doesn't have true help soon, she will lose herself entirely."

  He left her to think. So she returned to Grandpa's room and curled up in a chair next to Mom. Mom lay where Lily had left her, cheek pressed against the hospital bedsheet and hands wrapped tightly around Grandpa's limp fingers. She didn't move or speak.

  Lily studied the back of her mom's head, her orange hair splayed out like bright seaweed, the orange spray paint tinting her scalp. Mr. Mayfair was right; Mom was worsening. Her rate of decline is worse than we expected, Lily remembered Grandpa saying. We must act now.

  Lily couldn't miss this chance. She had to do it. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor filled the room. Grandpa would have wanted her to, no matter how much she disliked the thought of entrusting Mom to strangers.

  "Mom?" Lily said. "I have something to tell you. Grandpa had a secret...."

  Mom raised her head. She looked like a porcelain doll about to shatter. Her tears had left crisscrossing streaks on her cheeks like tiny fissures.

  Taking a deep breath, Lily told her the truth.

  As she talked, Mom's eyes widened and her mouth opened into an O. Her hands fell away from Grandpa's.

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  Finally, Lily ran out of words. Silently, Mom stared at her.

  "Are you ... okay?" Lily asked.

  Mom looked back at Grandpa. She picked up his hand again and held it.

  "This is why he bought us to Reunions," Lily said. "So that I could learn how to take you home."

  Mom leaned over the hospital bed and kissed Grandpa's cheek. "No," she said softly and firmly.

  Lily blinked. "What do you mean, no? No to which?"

  "My place is here," Mom said, "with my father."

  "Mom, he's not ..." Lily faltered.

  Mom smiled faintly. "Of course he is," she said. "He is my family, even if we don't share blood. Or chlorophyll."

  Lily winced. For the first time, she couldn't read Mom. She couldn't tell if she was bitter or amused. She merely sounded calm and certain. "But you've said it yourself: Every day, you slip away more."

  "I won't leave him," Mom said.

  Shaking her head, Lily opened her mouth to object again.

  Mom laid a light hand on her arm. "No, Lily."

  Lily thought of a dozen arguments and discarded each one. Mom wasn't stubborn often, but when she was ... Grandpa had once compared her to a tree, happily bending whenever the breeze wanted her to but sticking in place when it m
attered. Lily wished she could hate him for saying things like that. "You don't even seem surprised," Lily said.

  Mom cocked her head and looked as if she was considering

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  her level of surprise. "It makes sense," she said finally.

  Lily gaped at her. She was joking, right?

  "Once, I took extra medicine," Mom said. "Not intentionally. I forgot that I'd already taken it. Every flower in our apartment bloomed. The roses, they danced." Her eyes began to shine. "The morning glories, they sang as beautifully as their name. And the herbs border ... the apartment smelled of basil and rosemary for days. You asked me what I'd cooked; I said that I couldn't remember. I thought I had imagined it all."

  Lily didn't know what to say.

  Mom almost smiled. "It is nice to know that I'm not quite as crazy as you thought, isn't it? I think it's nice." She turned back to Grandpa and patted his hand. "You had your reasons for your secrets, I'm sure. You can tell me when you wake. I'll be here."

  "Mom ..."

  She repeated, this time to Lily, "I'll be here."

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  CHAPTER Eleven

  In the club cafeteria, Lily fetched a cup and filled it with Sprite. She watched the bubbles froth and tried not to think too hard about Grandpa upstairs hooked up to IVs and monitors. Jake approached her. He handed her a lid and straw.

  "I heard," Jake said. "I'm sorry."

  "He'll wake up," Lily said. "He's strong. He runs half marathons on weekends. For fun. With no one chasing him." She tried to fit the lid over her cup. It popped up, and soda spilled over her hand. She stared at it and suddenly felt like crying. She blinked hard. "He'll wake up, and he'll ask me why I didn't help my mother." She watched a tear drop into the soda. "The dryads could help her. They may have some kind of cure. But she won't go with me, even if it's what Grandpa would want...." She sucked in air and blinked faster, forcing