The Wood Queen

by Karen Mahoney

  Newton gave her an almost sympathetic look. “I realize this is difficult for your tiny human mind to comprehend, but this lump of ugly metal is merely a vessel. I’m a demon. Not a very important one, admittedly, but still … the Magus summoned me and trapped me here.”

  A wave of nausea washed over Donna, making her knees weak. Aliette’s words shrieked in the back of her mind, but she tried to block them out. If it turned out that the Wood Queen was the only person actually telling her the truth about anything, she might start hyperventilating.

  She shook her head. “No way! Even Simon, much as I can’t stand him, wouldn’t deal with demons.” She was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. If it were only as simple as mere summoning, Aliette had said.

  Now it was Navin’s turn to reassure her. His arm went around her shoulders as they stood talking to a bronze statue that claimed to be a trapped demon.

  Newton’s black eyes clicked. “If you want to deny the evidence of your own eyes, I wouldn’t dream of getting in the way.”

  “But what does he want with you?”

  “Power,” the statue intoned. “What else is there?”

  Donna was more than a little sick of finding herself stuck in the middle of complex power struggles. And it seemed the dynamic now involved three factions—until now, she’d believed the demons weren’t contenders. Not really. Sure, they were the ones who’d set the tithe that effectively kept all of the fey disenfranchised, but that wasn’t exactly something that the alchemists worried about.

  But Newton’s presence here seemed to go a long way toward confirming the Wood Queen’s sinister hints—which meant demons were part of the power games being played out in Ironbridge. And who knows where else?

  Donna took a deep breath. She needed to concentrate—Newton could have information about opening the door to Faerie, or even about her own powers, if she could find a way to get it out of him. Out of it. Whatever.

  Nav was glancing between the two of them, but for once seemed to lack something smart to say.

  The statue’s eyes drifted shut. “If that’s all you got, you can leave me to catch forty winks. Don’t slam the door on your way out, children.”

  “Wait,” Donna said, stepping forward. “I have questions.”

  “Don’t we all, dear,” Newton mocked.

  She let that go. “How long have you been here?”

  Click. Eyes open again. “How long have you been here?” Newton asked.

  Navin shifted behind her. “He’s jerking you around, Don. We should just get the hell out while we still can.”

  “Nice,” Newton said. “Get you, taking the mother country’s name in vain.”

  Donna frowned at the bronze head. “Actually, I was being serious.”

  “So was I. How long I’ve been here is irrelevant. Get to the point.”

  Her stomach clenched. Newton was waiting for … something. She just needed to find the right question. She was sure of it. “The point? Okay, I’ll get to the point. You listen to what goes on in here, right?”

  If its face could sneer, that’s exactly what it would be doing. “You call that getting to the point? I’ll answer one question—anything to relieve the boredom, you understand—but I will only answer a good one.”

  Then it blinked twice. It was so creepy, but Donna resisted the visceral urge to retreat.

  “Someone’s coming,” Newton added.

  “What? Who?” Heart pounding, Donna looked behind her as though she half-expected to see Simon Gaunt standing right there, all smug and eager with his glasses steamed up.

  “A crow. Flying toward you, little Underwood.”

  Navin’s hand tightened on Donna’s arm, and they looked at one another for a moment.

  She grimaced. “He might mean Robert. They probably sent him to collect me from the Blue Room.”

  “Better get moving then, kids. Don’t want to get caught out after curfew.” The statue’s voice had turned mocking again.

  “Don, seriously …”

  She waved Nav away. “Just another minute.” She took another step forward, bringing her within inches of Newton’s cruel features. She gazed into the blank depths of those inhuman eyes. There was no time to think; no more time for anything but the question she was allowed to ask. She couldn’t even worry about Navin hearing it.

  Donna stripped off her left glove and held her hand in front of the statue’s eyes. The magical silver wound lazily around her arm. This time, she didn’t even notice that the tattoos had started moving.

  “Apart from these,” she said, clenching her fist to punctuate the words, “apart from these iron markings, what is it that makes me the Iron Witch?”

  “Ah, a good question. At last.” Newton sounded almost impressed.

  Painfully aware of Nav’s anxiety to leave, Donna did her best to tune him out. “Is it a question you’re going to answer?”

  “The answer you seek is already inside you.”

  Her heart sank like a stone. “What kind of Zen crap is that? Who do you think you are, Yoda?”

  “I know what you want, and my answer stands: you have already activated your powers, girl. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  Scowling, Donna turned away. “Come on, Nav. This is a waste of time.”

  He hesitated. “Should we just … leave it here like this? As Simon’s slave? It’s as trapped as we are.”

  “I can hardly fit him in my bag.” Not that she would; that horrible thing had just played her for a fool.

  Newton fluttered his eyelids. Click, click. “I promise to be very quiet.”

  “No,” she said. “Absolutely no way.”

  And there was no way—she couldn’t help a demon. Apart from it going against everything she’d been brought up to believe, demons couldn’t be trusted. Everybody knew that. They lied. It’s a fact, she reminded herself fiercely.

  But then, so do alchemists, said a dark voice inside her as they ran from the room and headed back up the passageway. Behind her she heard that awful, grating voice offer one final message. She tried to close her ears to it, but the words were loud and clear—even above the sound of their pounding feet:

  “There’s a storm coming, little Underwood—can’t you feel it?”

  As her sneakers hit the hard-packed earth of the corridor’s floor, another thought came to her, bright and clear and sharp as a blade: How had the statue—Newton, or whatever its real name was—managed to repeat almost the exact same words she’d heard her mother speak in a dream?

  Eleven

  Donna stared out of the car window at the little house she shared with her aunt. They’d moved here just over three years ago, and it was living here that had brought her and Navin together. On the one hand, she gave daily thanks for the serendipity that had led Paige Underwood to purchase the house next door to the Sharma family in an effort to blend in with ordinary people. On the other hand, it was hard to be thankful when all she’d managed to do was drag her best friend into a whole world of crazy.

  From her spot in the back seat, Donna glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Aunt Paige’s relaxed expression. Navin was in the passenger seat—he’d called shotgun, much to her aunt’s irritation and Donna’s amusement.

  They’d escaped from Simon’s lab just in time, meeting Robert in the Blue Room the very moment Donna had clicked the grandfather clock back into place. The afternoon session that followed had been long and tense, and the alchemists still hadn’t been able to reach a verdict—they wanted one more night to “sleep on it.” Navin had been pleased that they would reconvene for a third day, because it meant he could get out of going to school on Monday.

  She was glad Navin had been with her, down in the lab, when all her suspicions were confirmed. Yes, the Order of the Dragon had lied to her. Or at the very least, they’d twisted the truth and omitted facts, which led her to make wrong assumptions. Very wrong assumptions.

  How could she have been so stupid? Donna wanted to kick her
own ass for believing the party line she’d been fed for the past decade, but at the same time, she knew she had to start cutting herself some slack. Why wouldn’t she have believed Aunt Paige all these years? This was her family. Shouldn’t she be able to trust her?

  Until very recently, Donna hadn’t ever had a reason not to trust her aunt.

  Back in the house, having said her goodbyes to Nav in the darkness that shadowed the sidewalk, Donna demanded that her phone be returned. She’d been without it ever since returning from the Ironwood, and she wanted to call Xan without worrying that Aunt Paige would listen on the extension.

  Paige had actually tried to refuse. “How can I trust you with it?”

  Trust. There was that word again. Donna resisted the urge to tell her aunt what she really thought, instead fixing her expression into one of calm acceptance. “I’m just processing everything, Aunt Paige. Give me a chance to prove to you that I can change.”

  Lying made her feel sick, but at least it got her phone back.

  Not that it did much good—Xan wasn’t answering his phone. He wasn’t answering either of them; his cell went straight to voicemail, and his house phone just rang and rang.

  Donna lay on her bed for a while, watching the glowing numbers on her digital alarm clock change. Her aunt had gone to bed, but there was no way Donna would be able to do the same. How could she possibly sleep? In a sudden rush of emo-drama, she wondered how she’d ever be able to sleep soundly again; too much had happened.

  Too much needed to be fixed.

  As her thoughts drifted back to her mother, Donna remembered what Quentin had told her about Rachel keeping a journal. She pulled off her black gloves and stretched her fingers, trying not to look too closely at the silver spirals of iron branded into her pale flesh, and thought about her aunt. Paige was an organized woman, and most of her important documents were either locked in the family’s safety deposit box at the bank, or kept in her study downstairs.

  Donna knew that Aunt Paige had a steel box in the bottom drawer of her desk—she remembered seeing it a couple times and wondering about it. Once, when she’d been maybe eight or nine, she’d even asked what was in it. Paige had just said, “Treasure.” Just the kind of thing you’d tell a curious little girl.

  Biting her lip, Donna wondered if she dared to do what she was planning to do. Aunt Paige had no idea that she knew her mother’s journal existed, so she would have had no real reason to hide it somewhere outside the house. In fact, if there was any kind of delicate information contained inside the journal, it was likely to be safer here, under magical protection.

  Okay, she thought, making a decision and pushing down the inevitable guilt that rose up inside her. She was getting good at sneaking around. Maybe it was time to do a little more.

  Donna had never entered the study when her aunt wasn’t actually in it, and not because she was oh-so-respectful of Aunt Paige’s privacy. Rather, it was because the room was protected by wards laid down and regularly boosted by alchemical incantation. Donna had learned this the hard way when she’d been much younger. It wasn’t as though the wards, when tripped, actually hurt the person breaking in—it was more that the intruder became marked with indelible magical ink, kind of like the ink used by banks to protect large sums of money. Except the alchemical version was invisible to the human eye and didn’t leave you splattered with bright, incriminating dye.

  So, if she really was determined to do this—and she was—then Aunt Paige would know about it. She’d feel the ward break if she was awake, but perhaps her being asleep would buy Donna some time. Still, there would be no doubt about what had happened—Paige would be able to detect the evidence the minute she laid eyes on her.

  Donna was surprised to find that she no longer cared. She wanted the truth: about the Order and about her parents. Maybe she would even find out what really happened that night in the Ironwood.

  She stood outside the locked study door in the nighttime silence of the house, squeezing her hands into fists and gazing at the tattoos. As they wound their way from beneath her elbows to the tips of her slender finger, the iron markings flashed with their own inner light and power.

  Just as she was beginning to wish she’d put her gloves back on, that physical sensation hit her chest like a heavy blow. Donna stopped herself from crying out, then forced herself to wait out the discomfort. Once again, the feeling wasn’t restricted to her hands and arms—the familiar pain she’d experienced occasionally over the years—but was something that radiated throughout her whole body. Something new.

  When it was finally over, Donna effortlessly snapped open the locked door handle and stepped into Aunt Paige’s office. She didn’t allow herself to think about it. She’d spent way too long worrying about consequences, and not enough time taking action.

  Things were about to change.

  Minutes later, Donna was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her aunt’s study with the heavy metal box—sort of like a small trunk—in her lap.

  She was surrounded by framed family photographs, faces from the past looking down on her from the walls and reminding her of her connection to something greater than herself. Family was so much … bigger than her current circumstances. That thread might be stretched tight, almost to breaking point, but it was still there, in the smiling eyes of Patrick and Rachel Underwood in happier times.

  For a moment, she couldn’t help feeling surprised that Aunt Paige even kept them in here. But then, Patrick had been Paige’s brother. Sometimes it was too easy to forget that.

  Donna opened the lid and almost reverently lifted the soft emerald material that lay across the top of the contents. It was a huge swathe of cloth, made of the smoothest velvet she’d ever seen or felt. Her throat tightened as she wondered if this was something her mother had worn.

  It was a long, old-fashioned dress, not something you could ever really wear in contemporary society—not unless you were going to a costume party, anyway—but it was still beautiful. Donna rubbed the material against her cheek and inhaled the scent of pine needles.

  How strange, she thought, that it should smell of something so natural after all these years of being shut away in an iron trunk. She tried to remember her mother’s scent, perhaps when Rachel had comforted her after a bad dream, but it was no good. Those memories were gone, and Donna was almost overcome with bitter-sharp sadness. The only scent she now associated with her mother was the acidic smell of disinfectant from the residential home.

  And really, she didn’t even have that—not with Mom hooked up to all that machinery in a stark white hospital room.

  She couldn’t help wondering what had possessed Aunt Paige to keep this remnant of the past. Maybe it had some special significance to her, or maybe she was more sentimental than Donna had thought.

  Placing the silk-lined dress carefully to one side, she examined the rest of the contents. What she saw there brought any faith she might still have in her aunt crashing down. As something inside her crumbled, it was almost immediately replaced by a glowing shard of anger.

  There was only one other item in the box.

  With shaking hands, she grasped the leatherbound journal and stared at it for a full minute. She was afraid that if she moved, something would change and the journal would prove to be nothing more than illusion—like a fey glamour left behind to torture her with possibilities. Fool’s gold.

  A bitter laugh escaped her, and she swallowed the taste of betrayal.

  Unwinding the thick cord binding the book, Donna opened the cover and gazed at the ornate frontispiece. She read words that she never thought she’d see, in handwriting she’d almost forgotten:

  RACHEL UNDERWOOD’S JOURNAL:

  In the event of my death or incapacity, please pass this book to my daughter, Donna. Thank you.

  It was signed, simply, Rachel. The R was tall and curved, the kind of writing that was better suited to letter-writing from another century. She was surprised to feel warm tears fill her eyes. She h
adn’t seen her mother’s handwriting for so long—she hadn’t even been able to hold a coherent conversation with her for ten years. It felt like Rachel was somehow reaching out to her from the past.

  Donna turned to the first page.

  Rachel Underwood’s Journal:

  I am afraid.

  Terrified … that’s probably a better word for it, although even that doesn’t come close to the constant state of dread I find myself in. Every day I wake with that suffocating black cloud pressing me into the bed. Every day, Patrick tells me I am making myself ill—that things within the Order aren’t as bad as I fear.

  But I know he’s wrong.

  The Order of the Dragon has become … sick. Rotten at its core. And what exactly is the core of our merry band of alchemists? More to the point, who is the core?

  Not Quentin. Certainly not Paige—though she wishes it were otherwise.

  No, the person destroying everything we’ve done is Simon Gaunt.

  He’s like a cancer, eating away at the heart of all that used to be good about the Order. The work we did once meant something—we protected people. Our ancestors built the iron bridge that stands guard at the entrance to the city. As the town grew up around the bridge, and expansion took humans way beyond the confines of the original boundaries, our role as protectors became more important than ever.

  The wood elves waited in the Ironwood; waited for any slight slip that meant humans might fall through the cracks and enter the wrong part of the forest. They took their chances when they could.