by J L Collins
Ash grit his teeth, his expression grim. “What if he left that nasty little surprise for you?” he finished, hitting it right on the head.
I didn’t want to think that Quicksilver would do that, but then again, when I left earlier he was supposedly out in the field. I didn’t know how long it would have taken him to put together the trigger, but he must have had enough time between when I left for lunch and now.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess I had it backwards.” The bitterness rose in my throat. “I don’t think it was Helio who drugged the fairies. And if it was Quicksilver, then I have to wonder whether he tried to drug Helio, too. I don’t know why he would, but how else did Helio’s drink get drugged?”
Following Ash’s gaze, I glanced back at the panel half hanging off the wall. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Quicksilver somehow created the drug. Or…”
“The adhesive! If he’s as smart as everyone seems to think he is, you might have a point,” Ash finished. “In that case…”
I gently laid Drusilla’s head back down and followed Ash. He pulled the panel back carefully and ducked just in time before something triggered and knocked him in the head with a crude-looking spring contraption.
“Jesus, be careful!” I hissed. “I really don’t want to die of a heart attack today.”
He tested it out, ripping it from the wall where it was just barely attached.
I couldn’t help but pace back and forth. If word got out that something had happened to Drusilla, our cover would be blown. Hopefully, Natalia would be just as discreet as Amortencia. She was smart, so I had to believe she would understand.
Ash was busy checking out Drusilla’s non-existent vitals in vain while I wore a path in the floor.
There was soft noise from down the hall.
The lighter came out and a ball of flame was in my hand with such ease that if I wasn’t so on the edge, I would’ve been proud of myself.
“Put that out!” Ash hissed.
The flames died out just in time, as two people came in from the lobby area. Natalia, the vampire elder on the Special Council, and a man I didn’t recognize walked into the newsroom. Instantly, Natalia was by Drusilla’s side.
This was only one of the countless times I wished for that kind of speed.
Ash was already explaining the situation, practically reading my mind when he asked her for her to keep everything under wraps for now, until we knew what was going on.
Natalia’s musical voice soothed my nerves a bit as she placed a well-manicured hand on Drusilla’s. “I will take care of her. Whatever this magic is, it will not affect her for very long,” Natalia said slowly, running her hand over Drusilla’s long dark locks. “My poor child.”
I knew she thanked me, and I knew somewhere in the back of my mind where the autopilot was working, that I told her to please just take care of Drusilla.
I probably said something else but my brain was on overdrive, rotating through question after question. And I couldn’t use magic in any feasible way—not like the last time I found myself in a sticky situation. How had everything gone so wrong so fast?
It took Goldie nipping at me for me to realize she was back, too. Of course she was… she was the one who must have brought Natalia along.
I finally stood up, my stomach lurching.
“Goldie. Come on,” Ash said, holding his sturdy arm out for her to land on precariously. “We need to make sure that no one is hanging around waiting for us to leave. I don’t like the idea of him being out there, watching which way we go…”
Goldie screeched a badly timed “Wait!”
Ash's arm encircled my waist and we were pulled through the invisible space until a moment later we were standing in the basement of the library. Goldie squawked, her feathers ruffled in the transport.
“I hate, hate, hate that,” she huffed, flying off and shaking her wings out. “Let’s not do that again.”
“You know why we had to. If Quicksilver, or anyone else for that matter, is keeping an eye on the newsroom, we don’t want him to know where we’re at.” His arm tightened reflexively around my waist, but the twitch of his muscles brought him back to the physical present, and he quickly let go of me.
I spun away, pretending I hadn’t noticed. “Good idea to come down here. He might have eyes on the library, too. He knows how often we visit.” And by we, I meant myself.
Now that we were somewhere safer for the time being, I jumped to the next logical step.
“We’re the only ones who know the possible truth about Quicksilver. Which comes with a certain responsibility.”
“You’re not going to do the thing where you insist we pretend to be some kind of comic book superheroes, are you?” Ash said, shaking me from my thoughts with his dorky reference. Only Ash.
“No one said anything about superheroes, you nerd,” I said, ignoring the eye-roll. I took a deep breath in and blew it out. “We need to come up with a solid plan. Goldie, we need you as a lookout to keep an eye on things from far away. If you can get eyes on him, even better. That would reassure me, but only if you can do it without him knowing.”
“I mean yes, I can do that. But it makes sense if—”
“Ash is going to have to be our big gun. You have the brains and the strength to help keep Quicksilver in place. It shouldn’t be a problem once he’s been detained. He’s smart, but he’s not Houdini or anything.”
Ash frowned. “I’m not sure it’ll be that easy, Indie.”
I continued, pacing back and facing them. “And since we’re going to need something to draw him out, I’ll be bait.”
Ash went from concerned to downright angry in a split-second. “No. No way, you are not bait. We can come up with something else—”
“Seriously? We don’t have time to argue about this, Ash! I’ll be the bait, this is not up for discussion and—”
“Tell this woman that she is insane, Goldie!” he demanded, his hazel gold eyes like rings of fire around pools of black.
“She’s not insane,” Goldie said, looking at us like we were acting like children. “But you’re right. She’s not bait.” Goldie went to perch on an empty book cart. “I am.”
This time I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I told you, we need your eyes in the sky.”
“Look, we have a sort of advantage here if you think about it. As far as Quicksilver knows, you’re either dead or at the very least, out of the picture for now. He has no idea Drusilla tripped his little trap.”
I pursed my lips. “And how exactly do you know that?”
“Because I saw them making out outside of Lucky’s a few days ago. He likes her enough that he’d be upset if he knew he hurt her. At least, I’d like to think so.”
I wasn’t quite so sure. “He possibly murdered his best friend. I think you have too much faith in him. Believe me, I know a thing or two about that with him.” The acid in my tone was real. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to forgive myself for not fitting the missing puzzle piece into place sooner.
“Whatever you say. You need to stay out of the open—that’s my point. If he thinks you’re still at the Gazette, then we can use that. Ash, what do you think?” she asked, looking at him expectantly.
“I don’t like the idea of using you as bait either, especially since wings won’t keep you out of harm’s way with him. But… you do have a point about our advantage. Before we even set a trap, we need to figure out where he wandered off to. Why did he try to trap Indie in the first place? His motivation is going to determine where we can find him. So let’s think.”
It was nearly excruciating to sit around talking when I felt like that was all we’d been doing. Now that Quicksilver was out there doing whatever, I wanted to see this thing through to the end. Especially after I let him into our space and trusted him completely. After Drusilla trusted him completely.
Now it was personal.
19
The Cave
“What else do I need…?”
I
laid out my trusty lighter, my Grandad’s old Swiss Army knife, and my phone, and studied the lineup.
Something was missing.
If I was going to do this right, I was going to need a way to pin the truth on Quicksilver. Whatever it was, we’d need him to give us some kind of confession. Enough to have him detained, anyway. From there, it was up to the police and the Special Council.
The fact that his own aunt was one of them left me a little wary. I pushed that thought back though and found some boxes of the library’s old junk to sift through.
While I was playing it safe in the library’s basement, the other two were out looking for Quicksilver. We just needed to lay eyes on him from afar, and since I was outvoted on being our bait, they had to be the eyes on the ground.
I groaned. Good god, even I was sick of listening to my battle analogies.
I knew what I was looking for and Ash had even said there were some packed away somewhere, but I had no idea where they could be.
Something gleamed under the fluorescent lighting, sticking up out of a busted cardboard box a few feet away. I scrambled for the small voice recorder and clutched it to my chest with a sigh. “Perfect.”
I’d need the voice recorder in case Quicksilver said anything incriminating enough to use against him.
He was a smart guy, so I grabbed a pair of scissors and made a slit in my jacket just big enough for the voice recorder to fit. Just in case…though it wasn’t ideal.
If I were more well-endowed then maybe I could get away with tucking it down the front of my shirt, but the jacket would have to do.
Like a crack of lightning splitting down the middle of a tree, something crashed into the boxes behind me, sending me sprawling forward and banging my elbows on a table.
I shrieked and Goldie squawked.
“Never again!” she snapped as she straightened herself up, glaring fiercely at Ash.
“Well?” I asked, rubbing the spots where bruises were definitely blooming across my skin.
“We checked his dorm floor. The RA says Quicksilver hasn’t been in school for weeks now, yet no one’s come to collect his things. Everything’s still in his room,” Ash said with a frown.
“Okay, well that’s awesome. I love that for us. So we have no idea where to start looking…”
“He did mention something about checking for Quicksilver down in the valley. The RA’s seen him around the new magic spring.”
That made sense, considering we ran a whole piece on it in the paper because he asked. The tension in my jaw would cause a headache if I wasn’t careful.
“It’s worth a shot,” Goldie said, folding her wings out in front of herself. “He might even be there by himself.”
“True,” I said. “Then it looks like it’s time to move out, troops.”
“Ugh…”
“Here we go again…”
I winced. “Sorry.”
I wasn’t sure what I imagined when the term magic springs came to mind, but this place would be a close second.
Trees covered in pink and orange blossoms dotted around a bubbling pit of icy blue water. The water itself reminded me of the cloudy liquid left behind when you dip your paintbrush into a cup of water too many times. On the other side of the hot spring was a group of trees with their thick trunks tightly entwined. You could just make out the boulders behind them that were arranged in such a way that only the trained eye could make them out.
“There,” Goldie said hooted softly. “I told you there was a cave here.”
“No one doubted you,” I quietly reminded her.
Ash held up his finger to silence both of us. “Goldie, you know what to do, and you,” he said, pointing directly at me, “stay put.”
The plan was for Goldie to distract Quicksilver with some leading questions, allowing Ash to sneak up on him. A pouch of the shimmery sleep dust we'd gathered up was somewhere in his pocket.
That reminded me.
I stuck my fingers down into the opening in my jacket and fumbled around for the right button, quietly pushing it to start recording. Hopefully the machine would pick up his voice from this far away and muffled through the jacket.
Maybe I was being childish with my annoyance, but after piecing together everything, I felt like I owed it to myself to be the one to confront Quicksilver. After all, I was the one who’d hired him.
“I still don’t see why I have to hide. If we’re going to detain him here, then why does it matter?”
Ash pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now’s not the time to come up with a new plan, Indie. We have him potentially cornered, so we need to take advantage of that.”
I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him. He was right, but he was also partly a pain in the butt.
We had to keep as quiet as possible, so Ash and I had to time arriving in our planned spots with Goldie at just the right mark.
He held his hand out in front of us. Three. Two. One.
His grasp on my wrist was tight until he immediately let go, only to be gone in an instant. I’d been taken to a spot right outside the entrance of the cave at the exact same moment that Goldie started pretending to scurry through the snow. She flew past me to help cover the sound of my feet crunching in the snow.
Somewhere out of sight, Ash was waiting.
“What in the world? I’ve been looking for you and you’re hanging out in a cave like a hermit?” Goldie’s voice bounced and echoed off the cave walls, giving away just how large it was on the inside.
I didn’t dare peek my head in just yet, but he was obviously inside.
“Goldie. I guess I should’ve been expecting you to turn up at some point.” Quicksilver sounded different with his voice trumpeting through the cave. Ominous, even.
Goldie went with the plan. “Your aunt’s been looking for you. She found out about your classes and I guess I’m here to let you know she wants to speak with you.”
The temptation to see his reaction was getting the best of me. Ever so carefully, I edged around just to be able to see the corner of his shoulder inside the cave.
But he wasn’t alone. There were three long tables lined up along one side of the cave, and one of them was covered with the kind of lab set up I haven’t seen since chemistry class in school. Steam hissed and billowed out of a larger glass flask that held a dark liquid inside. Beside it, there were beakers and beakers full of what looked like the hot spring’s cloudy blue water.
Goldie was facing the entrance with her back to the weird science situation, while Quicksilver strolled over to the end of one table, examining a label.
“That’s odd. Usually when she’s looking for me she just sends for me. Or did you not know she could do that?” There was a sigh. “I’m going to make an educated guess here and assume that you’ve already been to the Gazette?” His tone was eerily conversational.
“Why would you think I’ve been there?”
I couldn’t make out his face as he turned to face away from me, but the nervousness in her face was crystal clear to me.
“Because that’s why Drusilla sent you to come looking for me. I imagine she’s worried about Indie.”
The chill that ran up my back and pricked at my neck had nothing to do with the frigid breeze whipping around my face. I knew she couldn’t read my mind, but I begged her to be careful.
Goldie hopped from the top of one boulder to the makeshift table. “Worried about Indie?” she feigned concern. “Am I missing something?”
He was quiet for a minute. His footsteps retreated away from the tables until he was out of my line of sight.
Glass shattered, the sound ricocheting off the walls just like the pieces, and Goldie shrieked. I jumped up without another thought and ran headlong into a nearly invisible wall.
“There you are. I have to say, Indie, I’m impressed. I knew you were smart enough to put it together, but I didn’t think you’d actually make it this far.”
Quicksilver stood twenty feet away from me, looking
at me through a thin film of yellow. I pressed my hand against the film and my heart sank as it didn’t budge.
“Why are you doing this? Did you intentionally try to kill me?” Goldie’s silence hit me all at once. “Where is she?”
“Indie!” She was muffled somewhere in the darker corner of the cave, obviously unable to get out.
I grit my teeth and shoved into the see-through wall, once, twice. “Let me in!”
Quicksilver did not look amused at my struggling, but nor did he seem concerned. “I think you know the answer. How did you manage to get out of that though? My mechanisms are fool-proof.”
I smacked my palms on the wall. “I didn’t. Someone else tripped your little booby trap and got a lethal dose of sleeping powder right to the face,” I shouted.
His dark eyes narrowed. “Who?”
I didn’t find any pleasure in telling him, “I think you know the answer.”
“That is entirely your fault, then. Which is a shame, because I don’t think Drusilla will think very highly of you when I wake her back up. Not that it will matter.”
The stupid sob trying to escape was so hard to keep contained. “Why? Why would you do this? We trusted you! We were all a team…”
He turned toward the third-grade science lab, his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets. “This hot spring is full of potential and I seem to be the only person in town willing to do my part and analyze it. I tried to show my professors, my family, even Helio. But no one believed me.”
The jar of adhesive sitting on Cosmo’s dresser would’ve looked right at home amongst his table of experiments. “So you started working in here, away from everyone,” I guessed. “You’re apparently a mad scientist and none of us even knew.” I shook my head, though inside, the tiny threads of the cases I’d been working so hard on finally started to connect. “But why Helio?”
He was very obviously uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other as he leaned against the table. “I don’t suppose it matters much now. He didn’t believe me, either. He never truly believed in me, not since he joined that stupid fraternity. I should’ve known that was exactly what would happen.” He shook his head with a stony expression etched on his face. “But of course he didn’t approve of me trying to go further with my research. When I told him I was thinking of trying the sleeping formula on fairies, he thought I was betraying our own kind. Which is truly a silly notion. He didn’t think it would work, but then again I’m sure he believed me when my new glue clung to his wings and made it impossible for him to fly.” His shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be, I have to admit.”