Magic?
But whatever it is, it’s too late, because swooping shadows are darkening the edges of my vision and waves are rushing toward me and—
Something grabs me before I hit the water, shocking the breath out of me once more. My toes skim the waves before I’m suddenly rising instead of falling. There’s an arm around my waist, just above the knife, and a grey, leathery wing flapping beside me.
Jarvis?
“Hang on!” shouts a familiar voice.
This is a dream. It must be. I’ve hit the water and I’m dying and my final thoughts are of Chase and his gargoyle appearing at the exact moment I need them most. Darkness and dizziness fight to claim me. The jerky flying sensation starts to feel as though it’s happening in slow motion.
Everything speeds up again as we come to a sudden halt. Arms cradle me, and my face is pressed against Chase’s neck, and he’s whispering something I can’t hear properly. Something desperate, something pleading.
Then I’m lying on a hard surface. A hard surface that rocks gently from side to side. “Get us out of here,” Chase shouts to someone. His face appears above me, anxiety twisting his features. “Calla? Can you hear me?”
With the pain and the dizziness and the darkness that wants to pull me under, I find it takes great effort to force words out of my mouth. “How did you … know I was …”
“I didn’t,” Chase says. His eyes dart across my chest. I feel his hand on my shoulder. “But I knew Gaius was here. Tracking device inside his watch. The signal disappeared once he was inside the prison, but I knew where he was by then.” He tugs my sleeve back and wraps both hands around my arm.
“Did you … find him?”
“Don’t worry about him. You’re going to be fine, okay? You can easily heal from this. I’m boosting your body’s magic right now.”
“But I have … none … to boost. He took it all.”
“What?” Chase’s anxious expression turns to alarm.
“Gaius … took it.” He took it all. But I saw a spark, didn’t I? Or did I imagine that?
“That doesn’t matter,” Chase says, but I can see the fear in his eyes. “I’m giving you magic now. You’re going to be fine.” He lifts my arm and kisses my hand, and his lips are as warm as the magic I can feel flowing into me. “You have to be. You’re supposed to be around for a long time still. It is not your time to leave the world.”
I nod and let my eyelids slide shut. The pain is easing, giving way to a deep weariness. Sleep beckons, and I’m happy to let it take me. Then I can forget everything that’s happened since—
Mom.
“Mom,” I say out loud, managing to rouse myself enough to open my eyes. “They have her … in … the mulberry house.”
“Okay,” Chase says, removing one hand from my arm and cupping my cheek. “I’ll find her. I’ll get her back.”
With that weight lifted from me, I let myself sink back into the darkness.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
I can tell from the smell that I’m lying in a healing institute. Memories of my encounter with Amon and my fight with Saber flash across the back of my eyelids, scenes painted with desolation and pain and thoughts of death that tear into my mind’s canvas. I wait a while, allowing myself time to wipe the images away with an imaginary cloth.
My canvas is clean. Whole.
I am alive.
I lift my eyelids and find myself in a bed exactly like the one Mom was in. After blinking a few times, I turn my head to the side and see the elf girl from Wickedly Inked sitting on the stool beside the bed. Before I can say anything, she leans closer to me and tells me the story she’s apparently told everyone else: She was on her way to Velazar Prison to visit someone and passed a boat that had just left. I was in the boat, and I was fighting two men. Using an oar, she surprised them and knocked them out of the boat, then rescued me. She sailed as quickly as possible to where the faerie paths could be accessed, and brought me straight to the healing wing at the Creepy Hollow Guild.
I push myself up in the bed, feeling a hundred times better than the last time I was awake. “So you want me to lie?”
“For that part of the story, yes. You can tell the truth about everything else.” She stands up. “Well, goodbye.”
“Wait. Where’s Chase? Was he here?”
“No. If he were able to be here, there would be no need for you to lie about the last part of your story.”
“Has he found my mother?”
“I don’t know. I’m going now. Your family will be back soon.” Without another word, she slips away between the curtains.
I immediately push back the blanket and climb out of bed. Peeking beneath the stiff patient gown at my abdomen, I find that the knife wound is perfectly healed. Chase must have given me a lot of magic. I cross the enclosed area and stick my head out between the curtains. I don’t see anyone I recognize in the corridor.
“Miss Larkenwood!” Startled, I look the other way and see a woman healer hurrying toward me. “Please get back into bed,” she says.
“But I’m fine. Is my brother around?”
“Why don’t you get back into bed, and I’ll have a look in the waiting area for you.”
“But I don’t need to be in bed anymore. I’m fine. I’m just taking up space you could be using for another patient.”
“Miss Larkenwood.” She ushers me back through the curtains. “You arrived here yesterday evening with severely low levels of magic. You might feel fine, but I highly doubt your magic has fully replenished itself yet. In order for that to happen, you need to rest.” She points at the bed. I roll my eyes and walk back to it.
“Cal, you’re awake.”
I turn around before reaching the bed and see Ryn pushing the curtain aside. I run back past the healer and into his arms. “Is Dad here?” I ask as he hugs me tightly. “Do you know anything about Mom?”
Ryn steps back. “Dad’s having a shouting match with the manager of the healing wing, and I’ve heard nothing about your mom yet. What happened? Dad was gone, so I was the one who got the notification yesterday about your mother going missing. Then no one could find you either. Not even Vi.” He hesitates for a second, his eyes flicking to the healer, but he hasn’t said enough to give away Violet’s Griffin Ability. “Then an elf arrived here last night with you and a story about Velazar Prison. What’s—”
“Mr. Larkenwood, please let your sister lie down,” the healer interrupts. “She needs her—”
“—rest, I know,” I finish for her, climbing back into the bed. “Can I talk while I’m sitting down, or is that not restful enough?”
The healer makes an irritated noise at the back of her throat and leaves in a huff. Since she didn’t answer my question, I assume I’m allowed to talk. I tell Ryn about the two men who showed up while I was visiting Mom yesterday morning, about waking up on the way to Velazar Prison, and about being forced in front of a prisoner who was a spy for Prince Zell and Lord Draven. I tell him everything, leaving out any reference to the time traveling ability Saber had, and then end with the elf’s version of the story. It doesn’t matter too much that it isn’t the version that actually happened; the end result is still the same. I was rescued, Saber and Marlin got away, and they took Gaius with them.
“So it was just bad luck that you happened to be here at the same time they came to take your mother,” Ryn says.
“Yes. They were going to get rid of me, but when Amon heard about my Griffin Ability, he told them to—” I freeze. Like a heavy stone sinking to the pit of my stomach, a realization weighs itself down on me. “It’s gone. My Griffin Ability. I don’t … I don’t have it anymore. I thought Gaius had taken all my magic, and I was so relieved to discover I still had some left that I didn’t realize I no longer had that magic.” Tears spring up in my eyelids. My Griffin Ability is the one thing that’s made my life more difficult than anything else, but right now it’s the one thing I want most. It’s mine. It’s part
of me, and I’ve never wanted to be rid of it, no matter how much easier my life would have been without it.
“Hey, it’s not that bad.” Ryn leans closer and takes my hand. “This man, Gaius. Do you know if he can give Griffin Abilities back once he’s taken them?”
I nod and sniff as I whisper, “Yes.”
“Then it isn’t gone for good. We’ll find him, and you’ll get your ability back.”
I continue nodding. Ryn is right. Even if no one at the Guild comes close to finding Gaius, Chase will. I have no doubt of that.
I hear hurried footsteps outside my curtain, and then Vi walks in. “You’re awake!” She rushes to my side. “I have good news. I just heard that the guards who patrol the forest outside the Guild have found your mother. She was lying near the Guild entrance, still asleep. No one saw who left her there.”
Chase, a voice inside my head says immediately. I’m sure it was him.
“Wow, that’s … suspicious,” Ryn says. “Who would bring her back? Where is she now?”
“They’re bringing her into the healing wing as we speak.”
“Oh thank goodness,” I lean back against my pillows in relief. “Will there be someone to guard her in case Saber and Marlin come back for her?”
“Yes, there will be more than one guard,” Ryn says. “And those men hopefully won’t be able to get back into the healing wing, at least not the same way they did yesterday.”
“How did they get in yesterday?” I was wondering about that. It’s supposed to be impossible to get into the Guild if you’re not authorized to be here.
“Remember that party you were at the other night?” Ryn says. “Lucien de la Mer? Well, since he and his wife spend so much time at various healing institutes because of her illness, they each have access pendants to all of them. And guess what he reported missing this morning.”
“His access pendants,” I say slowly. So that’s what Saber was doing at Lucien’s party. “But access pendants have names written on them. Whoever scanned those pendants should have seen that the names didn’t match up to the people wearing them.”
“That’s what should have happened,” Vi says. “But the entrance for healing wing employees isn’t as carefully guarded as the main entrance to the Guild, and if a guard isn’t paying attention, he can miss details like that.”
“That’s what Dad is currently yelling at the manager about,” Ryn says. “Incompetent guards.”
“Perhaps someone should tell him that Mom is back.”
“Probably,” Ryn says. “And you should—”
“—rest. I know. I’ve heard that one already.”
After several more hugs and hand squeezes, Vi and Ryn leave. I open the drawers of the bedside cabinet and find my belongings in a neat pile inside one of them. I search through my clothes until I find my amber and stylus. Then I write two words to Chase: Thank you.
* * *
After a few hours of boring rest, Gemma arrives unexpectedly. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know you’re here,” she says. “I mean, none of us were told anything. We just know that people were looking for you yesterday. Saskia told everyone you probably decided to skip a day or two because you’re soft and can’t handle the way your mentor pushes you. Anyway, my mom overheard that you were here, so she told me.”
She asks what happened. After hesitating for too long, trying to figure out what’s safe to tell and what isn’t, I end up saying, “It was to do with my mother. Some men came for her, and I happened to be visiting at the time, so they took me as well. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”
Gemma stays for a while, filling me in on the lessons I missed yesterday and today and telling me all about Perry’s triumphant defeat of Blaze in the Fish Bowl yesterday afternoon. The setting was a circus tent, and Perry used stilts and a spinning metal hoop to bring down his opponent.
Not long after Gemma leaves, I hear a “Well, well,” coming from the gap in the curtain. I look up in surprise to see Olive standing there. “So,” she says. “You couldn’t wait until after your graduation before getting involved with the big league criminals. Oh no. Once again, you had to skip ahead of everyone else.” She crosses her arms. “Velazar Prison. You don’t mess around, do you?”
Fabulous. My friendly mentor has obviously spoken to Ryn, otherwise she wouldn’t know any of this yet. “I didn’t choose to get involved with a dangerous man who spied on the Guild for both Prince Zell and Lord Draven,” I say. “But since I did wind up having an involuntary audience with him, we now know what information he’s after, and we know he doesn’t have it yet. That’s a good thing, right? And the Guild also knows they should be going after Marlin and Saber, the two guys who are still out there doing Amon’s dirty work.”
Olive shakes her head slowly. “You think it’s as simple as that.”
“Yes, I do. Why shouldn’t it be? Someone points out the bad guys, and guardians go out and get them.”
“There are processes, procedures, laws. There are time constraints. There are many problems the Guild is dealing with, in both this realm and the human one, and this case doesn’t require immediate, urgent attention just because one trainee thinks it should.”
“But this is important!”
“That’s what everyone says about their cases. And a case where the ‘bad guy—’” she mockingly repeats my words along with air quotes “—is already locked up for life isn’t high on anyone’s priority list.”
“But … you guys are supposed to fix stuff like this. That’s what the Guild is for.”
“What’s there to fix? You’re alive, and your mother’s been found. Yes, the two men who captured you are still out there, but as long as no one is in immediate danger, and as long as the Guild asks to be alerted as soon as they attempt to visit the prisoner again, there isn’t too much else to be done at this point. The investigation will remain open, but any guardian working on it will dedicate his or her time to more important cases first.”
I try to reel in my frustration, but it’s difficult. “I expected more from the Guild.”
Olive throws her head back and laughs. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way things work around here and at every other Guild. If you were hoping for something different, you are more than welcome to leave.”
She’d love that, but there’s no way I’ll give her the satisfaction. Besides, the Guild is still where I want to be, even if the whole system doesn’t work as perfectly as I thought it would. I stare defiantly back at Olive, and she leaves after letting out a sigh of disappointment.
After she’s gone, Dad shows up and convinces the healers to let me rest at home instead of here. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve had enough rest to last me a full year of training. And speaking of training, I’ve missed out on almost two full days of it and I’m anxious to get back to work. Dad won’t listen to my protests, though. He sends me straight to bed when we get home. I spend the remainder of Wednesday afternoon sitting in bed sketching pictures of stormy skies and turbulent seas and trying not to look at my amber every two seconds to see if Chase has replied.
The next day, I meet with the guardians working on Mom’s case so I can repeat my story to them, leaving out the part where I had a Griffin Ability stolen from me and adding in the alternate ending. I have to pay attention so I don’t lose track of exactly what I’m allowed to tell who. Chase will get the whole story, Ryn and Vi get most of the story, and anyone else at the Guild gets whatever they need to know about the bad guys and not much else.
After that, I go back to classes. I endure spiteful looks from Saskia and questions from other trainees. I spend the afternoon in the training center.
And then I get a message from Chase.
Old Guild ruins? 5 pm?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
I smile for the remaining fourteen minutes of my final training session. When I get to the old Guild ruins, it’s raining there. I was hot from an hour of arm strengthening exercises, but th
e air out here has a chill to it. I remove a hoodie from my training bag and pull it on over my head. A wide moss-covered archway stands not too far away. It’s crumbling in places but still intact enough to provide shelter from the rain, so I wait beneath it, leaning against one side.
Chase arrives through a faerie paths doorway. He looks around, then walks toward me with his hands pushed into his coat pockets. He reaches the archway and leans against the opposite side. Droplets of rain cling to his hair, and his eyes appear brighter than usual in the strange light brought on by the rainy weather.
“You look like you’re back to normal, Miss Goldilocks,” he says. “Didn’t I tell you you’d be fine?”
“You saved me,” I say simply. “That’s why I’m fine.”
He looks away for a moment, an indefinable expression on his face.
“You found my mother.”
“I did,” he says, returning his gaze to me.
“How?”
“I’m aware of some of the locations that Amon, the prisoner I assume you were there to see, has been using. One is a house on an estate behind Thistle Orchard in Eilemor. It’s secluded and surrounded by mulberry bushes. That’s where I went first, and, sure enough, there she was. It’s protected, of course, so it took me some time to get in.”
Based on only the words ‘mulberry house,’ it would have been almost impossible for the Guild to find Mom. Chase did it in under a day. “I don’t know how to thank you. Without you, I’d be dead and my mother would still be missing. My family would be broken.”
Chase smiles. “I would say it was luck or chance that I arrived in time to catch you, and that I know the location Amon refers to as the ‘mulberry house,’ but I don’t entirely believe in either luck or chance.”
A Faerie's Secret (Creepy Hollow Book 4) Page 25