The house was empty. She’d known it as soon as she saw the opened door and the hall filled with snow- but she still wanted to call Lou’s name, just to hear it, just to break the awful silence.
She took the last few steps two at a time, reaching the landing outside Lou’s room. The door was closed, and Evie found it hard to reach out and grasp the handle. The others came up behind her. She could sense Auran’s anger without seeing him. It made her finally push down the handle and swing the door open.
Lou wasn’t there.
The room was the aftermath of chaos. The bed sheets were torn, the bed itself unbolted from the wall and abandoned in the centre of the room. The walls were covered in writing, scrawled lines in black felt tip, like the graffiti of a toddler. Evie had to force herself to focus hard until words emerged from the scribbled mess.
Moon. Trail. Light. End.
Words written horizontally, vertically, slanted, backwards. Words everywhere. Evie had never imagined how words could have scared her like these did.
She jumped when Trix appeared beside her, grasping her hand and squeezing tight. She didn’t say anything; there was nothing she could have said. Lou had made this mess, written these words. And Evie knew in the end, it was all her fault that this had happened.
“The mirror.” Auran was the first to speak, drawing Evie’s attention to the hated wooden frame in the corner of the room. It was empty. Broken shards of glass littered the floor, so small and delicate that they made a blanket, like glittering, silver snow.
“What’s going on?” Trix asked, voicing the words that were stuck in Evie’s throat.
Auran examined the glass, his face drawn with anxiety. “He must have taken it.”
“Taken what?”
No one needed to ask who.
“The last shard of the mirror, the real mirror. It was still in the frame. This-” he motioned to the scattered glass, “this was just a new piece of mirror set in place to hide it. It’s been broken, and he’s taken the shard.”
Trix frowned, meeting Evie’s eye with a look of panic. “I thought he was supposed to be trapped.”
Auran sighed, jerking his head towards Bran, who was skulking silently in the doorway, still studying the mad writings on the walls. “It’s like him. The solstice gives the King a little freedom. Up until midnight. Still-” he dragged his boot through the broken glass at his feet, as if still hoping to find the precious shard of magic mirror. “He needs to feed a lot to stay strong, to have a corporeal form.”
Evie found her voice, bursting from her throat raw and angry, “You knew this?” Her heart thumped against her ribcage pumping adrenaline through her veins. “You knew all along that he could leave tonight!”
Auran didn’t even look at her when he answered. “Of course I did.”
“You didn’t tell me. You didn’t let me get back here to her and you knew!”
Auran glanced at her, his expression one of vague irritation. As if she was a sudden inconvenience.
‘Where is Louise? What the hell has he done to her?” Her hand was shaking, so sweaty in Trix’s grip that it slipped out. She stepped closer to Auran, fury building inside her like a physical pressure. She wanted to hurt him.
“He didn’t tell me he would leave here, Evie. The plan was that I would retrieve the mirror shards and bring you here to break the spell. This is as strange to me as it is to you.” His calm tone was condescending.
Evie lifted Lou’s porcelain lamp from the dresser beside her and hurled it at him. His arm flipped up, a casual movement that happened far to fast. The lamp shattered against it.
He only gave a bitter smile. “This is not my fault- and if you insist on being a fool you are never going to find your stepmother. I am the only chance you have at it.”
Evie glared at him, tears burning in her eyes. They were hot and angry tears, but she refused to let them spill, blinking them back. “Was that a threat, Auran?”
“No, it was a fact. I’ve got a job to do, and not a single one of you is going to get in my way.”
“It surprises me that you did not expect the Unseelie King to be so unreliable,” Bran said. It was strange to hear his voice after he had been silent so long. He came to stand at Evie’s side, and his presence was comforting despite the monster still resident within him. He was turning out to be more reliable than her Seelie Faerie Prince.
Auran lost interest in the argument. His eyes fastened on top of the dresser table behind Evie.
She turned, following his gaze. A red rose lay neatly on the table, so red it was like a cartoon and not real. Evie had never seen a rose with so many thorns, too many to make it possible to move it without getting stabbed, but she brushed it aside carelessly, ignoring the sting. Underneath it were her tickets to the school dance. She picked them up, staining the dusky gold cardboard with bloody fingerprints.
“He’s gone to the school,” she said, looking to Auran for an explanation.
It was Bran who gave it though, for Auran was already tearing the empty mirror frame off the wall. “Plenty of youthful energy there for him to drink.”
“And Lou? Will he have taken her there?”
Bran opened his mouth, but didn’t get to say what he was going to.
“Follow the trail of moonlight on sea,” Trix said. “Come find me.”
She had found a legible sentence among the nonsense on the walls, and stood with her finger under the last word.
“What the hell does that mean?” Evie said, directing her words at Auran.
He ignored her. “We have to get to the school. And soon.” He motioned with a nod to the small clock sitting on Lou’s mantelpiece, above the fire she had always meant to light one day, but hadn’t managed to.
It was almost half past ten, and they had until midnight to break a spell.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bran had decided he did not like the modern world. He tried to remain calm as they descended a staircase from the town into an underground cavern.
People hurried forwards, passing little cards over metal stands, the little doors barring the way opened to let them pass. Evie and Trix went to join a queue where a woman sat behind a glass window and exchanged coins for the pieces of card.
Bran stood in an awkward silence with Auran, waiting for the girls to return. He wanted to ask where they were, but Auran’s stoic face told him that he didn’t want to speak. The faerie was pale, his skin an ashy grey, as though he had an illness.
There were a myriad of strange looking people in the cavern, but they still stared at Auran as they passed. A boy with long green plaits, wearing the chunkiest black shoes Bran had ever seen, almost walked into a post because he couldn’t tear his eyes off the glamoured faerie. Auran didn’t seem to notice the attention he was getting.
When Trix and Evie returned, Evie handed them each one of the smooth blue and white cards. She threw Auran’s more than handed it to him, but he caught it easily, paying her manner no attention.
Instead he stared ahead past the barriers, and Bran realised there was dread in his eyes. Bran began to panic himself.
They approached the strange barriers and Trix went first, swiping the card across a glowing white pad. The doors swung out and she sauntered through. Evie followed her, holding the stained, torn skirts of her gown close to her body so that they didn’t get caught.
Auran held back, motioning for Bran to go first. Bran glared at him. Since when had Auran shown him any manners? He hesitated until Auran pushed him up to the barriers. The faerie was breathing heavily.
Bran swiped the card, feeling as though everyone was watching him, and that the doors would refuse him. But they swung out and he walked through quickly, terrified they would suddenly close again before he was past. Auran came last, his lips pressed into a thin, tight line.
There was a further staircase, this one moving on its own. Auran pushed Bran onto it as well, and though Bran wanted to yell at him, he found his voice wouldn’t come. He stumbled a l
ittle, bumping into Evie when they reached the floor below and he had to step off the stairs.
He heard Auran’s sneering laugh in his ear from behind, but it quickly cut off as they walked through an archway and came upon a large metal cart. Its doors slid open and people poured out of it. Then Evie and Trix stepped inside.
Bran found his legs were frozen, refusing to let him step up inside the hideous thing. Auran didn’t push him this time; he merely stepped up beside him, as if he was bravely going to his death. Bran suddenly understood why the faerie had been dreading it. He was willingly imprisoning himself in an iron cage.
“Come on,” Evie called, beckoning Bran up to join them. He managed to step inside, though it felt like he was floating rather than walking on his two feet.
A disembodied voice announced that they should keep away from the doors. Bran looked to see where it had come from. People stood crowded in together, most with plugs in their ears, making strange noises.
The doors slid shut again by themselves, making him jump. Auran took another deep breath and the cart began to move, shooting along metal tracks and into a dark tunnel.
Bran couldn’t help but place a hand on Evie’s shoulder to steady himself, and also partly to calm himself. She didn’t shrug him off, and he was glad. But she shivered slightly.
A little way through the journey a young lady stood up and let Auran have her seat. He was standing leaning his head against a cool window, breathing shallowly. His skin was almost translucent.
Bran took not a small amount of satisfaction as Auran sank into the woman’s seat and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t move from that position until the cart came to a halt, and at that point he was the first out of it, jumping onto the platform.
As the other passengers trundled past him, he leaned over and retched a few times, clutching at his stomach. Trix and Evie looked shocked, but before anyone could say anything Auran straightened and stormed out of the cavern to another set of moving stairs. The others had to run to catch up with him.
The stairs went up instead of down this time. Bran found them easier than before and managed not to stumble at the ending. They went through some more barriers and then walked up a flight of normal stairs to the city above.
As they went out into the air Auran’s face gained a little more colour, and he spoke as if he had not just been sick in public a few moments before. “So where is this school of yours? Time is ticking.”
Evie didn’t answer, just started walking along beside the black road where the wheeled, metal boxes rolled by.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The school doors were wide open, but the main foyer was in darkness. The table outside the front office where the party committee usually checked tickets was turned over, and the glass window of the office smashed in behind it.
Evie heard high, inhuman laughter, and something scurried past the door, so fast it was only a disturbing blur. Trix went to the light-switch and flicked it a few times.
Nothing happened.
Evie gazed up at the hanging lights on the ceiling and was sure she could see a tiny pair of legs dangling down from the one directly above her. They were spindly, and bony.
Music floated down the corridor to the right, which led to the school assembly hall, where the dance would be.
Evie forced herself to walk into the darkness, and the others came behind her. The exit light glowed green at the bottom of the corridor, signalling the top of the assembly hall doors.
Things scuttled on the floor, sometimes hairy, sometimes slimy. It was like a sea of rats, and Evie held her breath the whole way, biting back a scream when something sharp sank into her ankle. She heard the skirts of her gown rustling as the sea divided and the little beasts ran past her. She didn’t want to know what they were.
A slow song played in the hall. Evie recognised it as Run by Snow Patrol when she could make out the guitar riff, increasingly louder as they neared the room. A scream trilled in the air. Footsteps clattered in the distance and then stopped, as though whoever had been running had disappeared mid-step.
Evie and the others kept walking until they reached the assembly hall. The curtains were pulled. They would not see inside the hall until they opened the doors.
Evie reached out to haul them open, but Bran moved forward and pulled them for her. Auran pushed ahead, parting the curtains impatiently and entering before Evie could, his stride unafraid and purposeful.
Trix and Evie went behind him, Bran coming last. The door shut, and they all stared at the scene before them.
Though the song was slow, a myriad of brightly shining faeries hopped in circles around the room, raving noisily. A swarm of angry red pixies chased a small black, troll type creature, which left slimy green footprints on the wooden floor as it ran.
Evie recognised her fellow students too, many lying on their backs between the tables that surrounded the dance floor, staring up at the hall ceiling as though they were star gazing. Jessica White was among them, a long, stick thin man pressed close to her. His rib cage was visible, some of the bones piercing through his pale blue skin and tearing against her red silk gown.
He brushed a strand of her brown hair away and whispered in her ear. She smiled in response and opened her mouth wide. He dropped two ripe blackberries from his emaciated hand, and she bit into them, the juice spilling from the sides of her mouth and trickling down her face like blood. The bone faerie leaned over and kissed her with his thin black lips, covering them both with his straggling, white-thread hair.
Evie’s eyes darted behind them to the gymnastic climbing frame that was folded against the wall. Bile rose in her throat when she saw that Christopher Carson was tied to it, his shirt open to expose a thick red gash drawn from collarbone to stomach. His eyes were closed, and a swarm of tall, skeletal women were on him like vultures, running their long blue hands over him, and taking turns to kiss his slack mouth.
To their right, a girl Evie recognised from her art class was lying on a table top, laughing hysterically. Her long brown hair was hanging down to the floor, and Evie saw that small glowing snakes and worms squirmed through it. A goat-like creature, with small human feet climbed out from under the table and began to eat the beasts out of the girl’s hair. Its teeth were long, thin needles, and seared the hair off as it ate.
Evie walked forward, unsure what she was going to do, but sure she had to do something. Auran gripped her arm and steered her away, leading her out onto the dance floor. It was crowded, and Evie couldn’t see where he was taking her. His grip was hard and it hurt, but he didn’t seem to care. Evie passed her Literature teacher Miss Hayes, who was twirling in a circle, dancing with thin air.
Auran pushed through another group of schoolgirls, and pulled Evie out into a clear circle. In the middle she saw Bella Morris, dancing in the arms of a tall faerie king. He spun her, and her white gown flared out, tiny diamonds catching the disco lights and casting rainbows all around her. She was the Winter Queen, Evie realised. She’d meant for Evie to come dressed up and everyone to laugh at her.
Evie looked down at her own tattered gown, and was filled with the sudden urge to tear it off. School didn’t matter; vain girls in their pretty hunting packs could only tear you apart if you let them. In the end they didn’t mean anything.
Bella sneered at her, obviously unaware that her boyfriend was being tortured only a few yards away. It only mattered that she was in the arms of the beautiful faerie. Though her eyes were glazed and hypnotised, there still remained enough of the wolf in her to make her gloat and grin. When the couple turned again, Evie saw his face for the first time.
The full force of him un-glamoured shocked her more that seeing Auran had. Among his surroundings he was like a dove in a nest of crows. A mask made of little shards of the mirror adorned his angular face, stopping at the bridge of his fine nose, and helping to accent his sharp cheekbones until they looked dangerous enough to cut someone.
His skin white and pure, and it gl
owed softly with an otherworldly light. His hair ran in chestnut waves down his back, its lengthy bangs shielding eyes of sheer onyx that peer through the mask. She had never seen anything look more beautiful and volatile. So human and so alien at once.
He met her gaze, and smiled a thin, crooked smile before spinning Bella out of his arms and letting go of her hand so she stumbled to the edge of the dance floor.
The Unseelie King offered his pale, musician hand to Evie, and Auran shoved her toward him. He caught her gently, sliding a hand around her waist and pulling her close.
Being near him was intoxicating. The music seemed to go far away. She felt light and insubstantial as he rocked her gently against his chest. “My little key to freedom,” he whispered.
Evie had the sudden urge to laugh, but an image of Lou’s ruined bedroom rose up in her mind like a shield and she pulled back from him.
“Where is my stepmother?” she demanded.
Finvarra let go of her and raised a shapely eyebrow. “My, my, Auran. This is a feisty one.”
Auran laughed without care, and the sound of it made Evie’s heart icy.
“Where is the boy then? That brat of a carpenter.”
“I’m here.” Bran spoke up from behind them. Evie turned to see him work his way through the dancing students and faeries.
Finvarra looked him over, as if inspecting a leper. He spoke only to Auran. “And have you the rest of the mirror?”
Auran bowed, his expression pained. “No, your Majesty. We still lack the sword.”
The King shook his head. “A simple task, and yet you fail.”
“I have not failed,” Auran said, so quiet Evie strained to hear it.
“Is that so? We have only half an hour left before I must return to that prison. And if you haven’t got the boy back to the alley, he’ll turn to dust and that will be the end of all our hopes, will it not?” He spoke to Auran like he might speak to a child.
Auran remained defiant. “My Lord, if you had stayed where we agreed you would, there would have been a lot more time. But regardless, he will come.”
Blood, Glass and Sugar Page 19