I try to move my arms and legs. They seem to be working, they’re just really weak. I feel for my magic. There’s barely a flicker. I’m not surprised; I don’t think I’ve ever felt this empty. Slowly, so I don’t attract her attention, I pull my knees closer to my chest. Then I wait. She’s still arguing with the person in her mirror, pacing between the vines and the broken pieces of chair. She’s almost close enough. Almost . . . almost . . .
I kick as hard as I can.
She screams as she goes down. I hear a crack as her head hits the edge of the stool. The mirror shatters. I climb to my feet and run as fast as my exhausted limbs will allow. I barely hear the gate as it slams shut behind me.
Get out of here, get out of here, get out of here.
I slide my shaking hand into my boot, but before I can draw my stylus out, I hear a shout behind me. I turn to face the voice. Damn shapeshifter. What is he still doing here? “You hurt my Scarlett?” he demands, coming toward me.
“She tried to kill me!” I’m so weak, so tired, but I see he’s going to fight me. I reach into the air and take hold of a guardian knife in each hand. It’s all I can manage. No great displays of magic from me for at least another few hours.
I slash a clumsy X through the air and he jumps back. He shifts, and suddenly he’s Nate. My hands shake harder. “That’s not fair.”
“Oh, but guardian weapons are fair?” He pulls a short dagger from his boot. He lunges forward, swipes, and steps back. Blood blooms across my forearm. I stumble backward, trying to remind myself that it’s not Nate who’s attacking me. “You’re not looking too good, Violet,” he taunts. “Did Scarlett give you a taste of her special magic?”
It was more than a taste, all right. I throw one of the knives at him. He dodges. The knife sails over his head and vanishes. He ducks down and slashes at my legs, missing by barely an inch. I kick, and my boot connects with his forehead. He sways, puts a hand against the wall for support, and grabs one of the torches. He holds it up, illuminating the gash on his head. “Why are you hurting me, Violet?” he asks. “Why? Don’t you know that I love you?”
It’s not Nate, I tell myself. It’s not Nate.
He throws the torch at me. I try to dodge, but I’m too slow now. Heat scorches my arm before the torch falls to the floor. He pushes me to the ground. “How do you feel about death, Violet?” he asks. “You dish it out to your assignments. Now it’s your turn.” He sits on my chest, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. He twists my wrist and I drop the knife. It disappears. His fingers wrap around my neck. Uselessly, I try to suck air into my lungs. Bright spots of light flare in front of my eyes. My fingers grasp the empty air and close around my smallest knife. I bring it down.
He arches up in pain as the knife enters his shoulder. Gasping for breath, I push him off me. I feel the air for my dagger. I wrap both hands around it, close my eyes, and stab it into his chest. I’m so weak, it only goes in halfway. But it does the job. He looks shocked, the way I imagine the real Nate would look if I plunged a knife into his chest.
Change back, I will him, clenching my trembling hands into fists. Change back, change back. But he doesn’t. He lies there. Dead. Looking like Nate.
CHAPTER SIX
I throw up in the kitchen sink when I get home. Then I lie down on the floor and consider never getting up again. Filigree doesn’t seem impressed, though. He shifts into gorilla form, carries me upstairs, and throws me, fully clothed, into my bathing room pool. A minute later, he scurries back through the door as a squirrel and drops a handful of nuts beside the pool.
I want to thank him, but I’m too tired to get the words out. I slowly peel my clothes off underwater. The ache around my neck eases, but I still feel shaky. I guess that’s what happens when your life is almost entirely drained out of you.
I wait until I’m dried, dressed, and lying on my bed before I let myself think. I killed someone. Again. That’s two someones in two nights. I breathe deeply and tell myself to get over it. I do this all the time. It’s my job. I fight bad people. Sometimes I have to kill them.
But I’ve never killed anyone who looks exactly like a person I care about.
That’s the big problem: I can’t get the image of a dead Nate out of my head. I sit up. As weak as I am right now, I have to know he’s okay. I draw a doorway onto my wall and take the few steps through the faerie paths into Nate’s bedroom. He’s there. Breathing. Alive. I kneel beside the bed and lift the bottom of his T-shirt without waking him.
The eye is gone.
*
I managed to push the dead shapeshifter into the Stuff I Don’t Think About box, which meant I was able to sleep last night. And all morning.
I wake up to find two amber messages from Honey, as well as a large amount of food, probably carried into my room during the night by Filigree. Honey’s first message asks if I enjoyed my suspension so much I decided to continue it for a few days. Her second says she made some excuse for me during training.
I spend the afternoon practicing blocking the dead-Nate image out of my mind and trying to figure out if I should tell Nate about last night. Eventually I decide I probably should. Lying is bad, right? And so is hiding the truth. But I don’t have to tell him tonight. It would be selfish to spoil the special date he has planned. Next week seems good. Next week I’ll get Nate over here, and Tora, and I’ll lay everything out for both of them.
Right now, though, I have to do my very best to get excited for this date.
*
Though the weather in Creepy Hollow is perfect this evening, it’s raining again in Nate’s neighborhood. I stand at his window and watch the raindrops beat against the glass before running down in rivulets. Behind me, Nate’s bedroom door opens. I turn quickly, checking that my glamour is in place, just in case it’s one of his parents.
“Hey,” he says, then stops. “Wow. I think I’ve only ever seen you wearing black.” He walks closer. “You look even more beautiful in pink.”
As it happens, the dress I’m wearing is actually black. It’s the same one I wore to the Council hearing and then forgot to give back to Raven. Which was fortunate, since I couldn’t very well go on a date in my ordinary clothes. I decided, though, that something as important as a first date warranted a color change. Having never tried any magic to alter my clothes before, it took me several hours of fashion disaster before I amber-messaged Raven and asked her how to do it.
“It’s cerise, actually,” I inform him, as though I’m an expert now. “But thank you.”
“I see you haven’t lost the boots, though.” His lips twitch as he attempts to hide a smile.
“Well, where else am I supposed to keep my stylus?”
“Uh, a handbag?”
I roll my eyes. “Can you see me using a handbag? Besides, I rather like the dress and boots combination.”
Nate kisses my cheek. For a second, the dead-Nate image flashes across my eyes. I force it deep down, but in its place come other memories of the night before. Someone was watching you, I think. Someone wanted information from you. And they got it. Damn, I wish I knew what that information was.
“Shall we go?” asks Nate. I blink, and this time when I push the memories away, it works. I’m going on a date. My very first date. I didn’t think I’d be able to muster much excitement after last night, so I’m surprised at the flutter in my stomach. Nate picks up a backpack from the couch and slings it over his shoulder. “I want to try something,” he says. “Do you think if you opened a doorway to the faerie paths, I’d be able to direct them?”
“Well . . .” It seems doubtful to me.
“I know you said I don’t have any magic, but there must be something in me that helps me survive the faerie paths. So I thought . . . perhaps . . . I could also direct them.”
“I suppose there’s no harm in trying.” I open a doorway on the wall beside the window. I close my eyes as we step inside, and keep my mind blank so that Nate can attempt to direct us. His fingers wrap around
mine.
I wait.
My ears fill with the sound of roaring, and a cold breeze whispers across my skin. I open my eyes—and get as much of a shock as Nate must have got when I took him to the forest last night. We’re standing near an outcrop of rocks on the side of a mountain. The ground falls away sharply to my left, and when I look down, I see a waterfall gushing out of a hole somewhere below me. I can feel the spray on my face. Grey clouds hang low and heavy around us, lit up by the occasional flash of lightning. The effect is dramatic.
“You did it!” I shout above the thunder of the water.
He nods, laughing. “Come inside before it starts raining.” He pulls me toward the rocks.
“Inside?” We step carefully around the side of one of the rocks. Behind it is a gap, like a tear in the side of the mountain. Nate swings his backpack around and pulls out a torch. He clicks it on, takes hold of my hand again, and enters the cave. It’s cold inside, but eerily beautiful. Where the torchlight strikes the cave walls, tiny gold sparkles reflect back at us.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Some kind of mineral, I think,” says Nate, “buried in the rock.”
It makes me think of magic. “How do you know about this place, Nate?”
He pulls me further along. “I’ll tell you in a bit. We need to get right to the back, where it’s warmer.”
The sound of trickling water reaches my ears, and Nate swings the torch around until he finds the source. It’s a stream, bubbling up at the edge of the cave, and then disappearing down into the rock again, probably to join the giant waterfall outside.
“You could catch a quick ride out of here if you jumped down there,” says Nate.
“Thanks, but I’ve had enough adrenalin rushes lately.” I follow close behind him, lowering my head where the cave ceiling dips down. It rises again, but now the walls are closer together, narrowing into a tunnel that reminds me far too much of the labyrinth. “Are we almost there?” I ask.
“Just be patient,” says Nate. He lets go of my hand and walks faster. I hurry after him, but slow down when I realize he probably wants a minute or two to set up . . . whatever one sets up on a date inside a cave.
I run my fingers along the wall. It isn’t smooth like the stone walls in the labyrinth, or sandy like the tunnel I was in last night, but rough with jagged, sticking-out edges. Nate’s light grows dimmer until I find myself walking in complete darkness. I consider conjuring up my own light, but decide the darkness makes this all the more exciting. I stretch my arms out to either side and touch the walls to keep from walking into them. Eventually, the darkness begins to lessen.
“Nate?” I call.
His shout echoes down the tunnel: “Keep coming.”
The tunnel opens into another cave. A shaft of grey light spills down from a hole in the ceiling, dust motes dancing in its path. On the far side of the cave, I see the shadowy shape of Nate.
“Is this it?” I ask. “Is this your surprise location?”
“Oh, it’s a surprise all right,” says a voice behind me. I whirl around. “Well done, Nathaniel,” says Zell. “Well done indeed.”
To be continued . . .
Look out for the next installment in the series, Masquerade.
Coming in July 2012
Find out more about Creepy Hollow by visiting the Creepy Hollow website.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you for helping me reach the end of another story, God. You know how to make time ‘elastic’ when I really need it!
Thanks also go to Nicola Vermaak, Kittie Howard, Rachael Harrie and Laura Josephsen. Your feedback, comments and edits are always greatly appreciated.
I don’t think any acknowledgements section will ever be complete again without a thank you to all the book bloggers out there. Seriously. You guys rock!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Morgan was born in South Africa and spent a large portion of her childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. These days, in between teaching mathematics to high school children, she writes fiction for young adults.
Connect with Rachel online:
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Table of Contents
Traitor
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
The Next Installment in the Series
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Traitor (Creepy Hollow, #3) Page 5