Blood of the Fey (Morgana Trilogy)

by Alessa Ellefson

  “That ain’t corral dust16 she’s sayin’,” Percy says. “We all saw what she’s capable of.”

  “I don’t care whether she’s lying or not,” Arthur says through gritted teeth. “She’s not coming.”

  “Fine.” I take off my jacket, then proceed to undo my bootlaces.

  “She could get hypothermia,” Lance says.

  I hear Arthur let out an exasperated snort, and I smile. Point for me!

  “Don’t hold him like that. You’re hurting him.” I try to pry Arthur’s fingers off the clurichaun’s neck, to little effect.

  To be perfectly honest, this doesn’t seem to bother the little man much other than he can’t look around. Instead, he spends the whole ride staring at me, an indecipherable look on his face.

  “So, what do clurichauns do,” I ask, “besides getting drunk? Do you, uh, have a job?”

  I hear Percy chortle.

  “Nibs has been allowed to roam free on the surface world,” Arthur says.

  “So long as it’s around this lake,” Percy adds.

  Nibs throws a series of curses at their faces. “This is our world,” the clurichaun barks. “We lived in it long before you and the rest of your bare-assed people decided to join in.”

  “I think we’ll agree to disagree on that one,” Percy says, looking bored. He smiles at me. “There’s always some debate goin’ on ’bout what happened after Creation.”

  “Needless to say, Nibs has one job,” Arthur says, shaking the little man, “and that’s to be our informant. We pay him good money for it too. Isn’t that right, Nibs?”

  The clurichaun doesn’t answer, but keeps his gaze uncannily fixed on me.

  “Have we, uh…have we met before?” I ask. I rack my brains, but can’t ever remember seeing a clurichaun.

  “Your mother would know,” he says with a smirk.

  Irene? Why would she know, when I was raised my whole life on the other side of the globe from her? Unless this was something that happened when I was still a baby…

  “So are you a, uh, earth elemental?” I ask. “Like a gnome? Or are you a dwarf? Do you always carry a lot of gold on you? Maybe in your hat?”

  Nibs slaps my hand away when I try to reach for his baseball hat. He sneers. “I’m not a leprechaun, you dumb bitch.”

  I stare at him, openmouthed. Not the kind of answer I had expected; that’ll teach me to try to play nice.

  “We’re here,” Percy says as Lance directs the skiff to the shore.

  The island is quiet, with not a single light to guide us but the ones of the city we’ve left behind and the quarter moon above us. Every single hair on the back of my neck stands up; this place is too quiet.

  Nibs, still held around the collar by Arthur, leads our way to a forbidding, dark shape ahead of us. A deserted house.

  “This it, then?” Percy asks, his voice sounding inordinately loud in the still air.

  “Y-Yes, sir,” says the clurichaun. “And another, f-further down.”

  “What are we doing here?” I ask them. There’s something about the place that makes me want to turn around and swim back to the other shore.

  “You’re coming with us,” Arthur tells Nibs, who’s trying to pull away.

  The clurichaun whimpers. We set out at a steady, but careful pace. Any minute now I expect to see something jump out of the shadows at us. Lance, beside me, has his knife out again, the blade gleaming in the dim moonlight. I wish I had a knife too, or a fork, or anything sharp.

  Shaking, the clurichaun climbs up the steps to the porch, swallows audibly, then pushes the door open.

  I hear a little pop behind me and nearly freak out, but a second later, the glow of a salamander encircles us, getting brighter and brighter until we can see inside the house like it’s daylight.

  “Wish you’d done that sooner,” I tell Percy.

  He grins at me. “Where would the fun be in that?”

  “Be quiet, you two,” Arthur growls.

  The house looks like any other, rugs covering the parts of the floor where the scuffs and marks are heaviest, a set of worn-out but clean couches angled before a fireplace, books and magazines covering the coffee table.

  It’s not till we arrive in the kitchen that my heart does a somersault. On the table is a full meal, the chicken congealed in its dish, the soup moldy in the bowls. Whoever lived here never had a chance to touch their food. Either these people had to flee without getting a chance to pack anything, or they’d vanished in thin air. And despite how unlikely the latter may be, judging from the serene order reigning in the house, it looks the most plausible.

  “I thought it was a couple of hikers that disappeared,” I say.

  “Yep,” Percy says, opening cabinet doors, then shutting them closed again.

  “So why are we here?”

  “’Cause these here folks have gone too. We’re just checkin’ if the two are related somehow.”

  “Maybe they heard about the first disappearance, so they got scared and left,” I venture.

  “Perhaps. ’Cept we found one of the bodies this morn, and the other two are still missin’.”

  He doesn’t expand further, and I’m suddenly too scared to ask.

  “Looks like another kidnapping,” Lance says, coming back from checking out the floor upstairs.

  Arthur nods. “Fey or human, though, that’s what we need to figure out now.”

  Next to the window, sitting beside a small water jug, rests a small rosebush. Its petals have withered and fallen around its now-black stem, and its leaves, curled up on themselves, look to be about to go the same route. Frowning, I reach out to the fragile plant. This is exactly the same kind of disease that had overtaken our arboretum back at Notre-Dame.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Arthur barks.

  I pull my hand away as if I’ve been stung and look at him accusingly. As if I needed to be scared more than I already am.

  “You don’t know what could be poisonous or not,” he says. He pushes Nibs in front of him. “Are you sure you don’t know more than this?”

  Head downcast, the clurichaun doesn’t answer.

  Arthur shakes him so hard his head bobs up and down and he loses his hat. “I know you were here,” he says. “Kaede reported seeing you swim back the night these people disappeared, and we all know how much you hate water. So tell me. What. You. Saw!”

  “N-N-Nothing…” Nibs squeaks out. “Much,” he adds under his breath.

  “Well, explain what you did see.”

  Looking defiant, the little man clamps his mouth shut. Arthur pulls out a dagger from inside his coat. He grabs the clurichaun’s arm, pulls up his sleeve, and presses the tip of the blade to Nibs’s bare skin. There’s a sharp hiss and a slight smell of something burning, like feathers.

  The little man growls, tries to pull away, in obvious pain. Sweat drops down his forehead like fat dollar coins.

  Arthur cuts a small line down his forearm, and blood pools around the injury like a scarlet rictus.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, jumping to stop Arthur. But Lance extends his arm to prevent me from getting any closer and shakes his head.

  I watch, in horror, as Arthur draws his blade down the little man’s arm.

  “Either you tell me,” he says, “or I shall remove your ogham.”

  Nibs swallows heavily. “Just…just one person,” he finally says, his voice shaking more than ever. “Too dark to tell who. He’s the one who took them.”

  “Where did he take them?”

  “Nowhere,” Nibs says.

  Arthur presses his blade down even harder, and I notice a strange yellow object poking out slightly from the wound. Nibs cries out.

  “Please, sir, I’m not telling lies! He left without taking anything with him.”

  “So you saw him leave then?”

  Nibs nods eagerly.

  “How?”

  “B-By the waters.”

  “He had a boat?”

  “N-No, someone
came to fetch him.” Nibs tries to pull away, but the more he does so, the more that yellow thing’s coming out of his arm, and I soon realize it’s his ogham.

  “Who came to fetch him?” Arthur asks, relentless.

  “Please, sir, you’re hurting me…” the clurichaun whimpers.

  “I asked who?” Arthur repeats, pulling his knife away without letting the little man go.

  The clurichaun, seeing that the immediate threat of the blade is somewhat alleviated, thrashes about like a fish caught on a line. He bites Arthur on the arm, hard. Arthur lets out a slew of curses, brings down his other hand to hold Nibs down. Then, with a sickening plop, the ogham slides out of the little man’s arm and bounces on the tile floor.

  Nibs yells as if he’s been stabbed to the heart, holding his arm close to his body. The whole house shakes beneath us as his yells turn into a high-pitched howl.

  “Criminy!” Percy yells over the racket. “Get the thing to shut it!”

  Arthur picks up the fallen ogham, pulls a small metal box out of his coat pocket, and slips the golden gem inside.

  The moment he shuts the lid, Nibs drops to the floor like a dead spider.

  “Did you just kill him?” I ask, stricken.

  “No, he’s just in shock,” Arthur says, looking grim.

  “Can’t we…” I breathe in deeply to stop myself from crying. “Can’t we just put it back in?”

  Percy shakes his head. “It’s a whole lot easier to let the cat outta the bag than get it back in.”

  Which I take to mean that once Fey lose their sources of power, it’s nigh on impossible for us to get them to reconnect. Either that or we don’t want them to.

  “But he helped us,” I whisper, still staring at the short man curled up on the floor.

  “He lied to us,” Arthur says, putting the little metallic bag back inside his pocket. “And people are dead.”

  “I thought Fey people couldn’t lie!”

  “They can twist the truth, which is just as bad.”

  Arthur heaves a sigh. “Come on, let’s go check out the other place before we go home.”

  “What about Nibs?” I ask, indignant. How could they treat him like that, take what’s most precious to him, then leave him like he’s nothing more than a pile of dung?

  “He’s trapped,” Arthur says without looking at the clurichaun. “He can’t go anywhere while we have his ogham.”

  All three of them head back to the front door, arguing with each other about how well the Board’s going to take the loss of one of their best informants.

  I pretend to follow them, but hang back instead. I crouch over Nibs and pat his back. I pull my hand away quickly. His whole body’s below freezing temperature, his skin showing a thin layer of frost.

  “Nibs, are you all right?” I ask, my breath fogging in the air. “Do you need anything? Is there something I can do?”

  But the little man either can’t speak or doesn’t want to.

  My eyes water, and I sniffle. “I’m really sorry about what happened,” I say. I take off my jacket and place it on his inert body. “I’m really sorry.”

  The dim glow of Percy’s fire elemental dies out, leaving me in near-total darkness. Only the faint moonlight bleeding in through the kitchen door remains, delineating the black rosebush sitting like a vulture on the windowsill.

  Feeling sick, I hurry outside, drop to my knees, then retch the little food I’ve ingested during the day. When the spasms subside, I take in deep lungfuls of the crispy night air, then pause.

  I pass my hand over the grass, feeling its coarse brittleness under my gentle touch, and my stomach does another flip. Whatever disease has attacked the rose plant has also spread outside.

  Walking with my nose close to the ground, I make my way farther and farther down the yard. Dried leaves crunch under my footsteps as I walk over the garden. The virus hasn’t left an easy trail, jumping about from one point to another, often forcing me to backtrack and examine multiple trees and bushes before finding more evidence of its nefarious results.

  Despite the obscurity, traces of the scourge lead me to a secluded area, surrounded by tall trees on one side and water on the other. Standing like guards before the shore are four large stones, like the warding stone I saw when I met Lady Vivian. Scanning my surroundings, I find a fifth boulder standing erect a few yards away, black and foreboding.

  I stop at the edge of the clearing, remembering Jack’s words, and shiver. Something here feels very wrong.

  “Morgan! Morgan!”

  The cry comes from behind me, back toward the house. The boys have finally noticed my subterfuge, and if I weren’t totally creeped out by now, I’d be thrilled at the prospect of scaring Arthur. Instead, I start back up the way I came, running as fast as possible. I want to get off this island, and I want to get off now.

  I trip and come crashing into Lance’s extended arms.

  “Whoa there,” says Percy, “hold yer horses.”

  “Where the hell were you?” Arthur asks.

  Lance helps me get my balance back before letting go of me.

  “By the shore,” I say.

  “Where is it?” he asks, looking at my feet like they could be hiding something.

  “Where is what?” I ask, not appreciating his sharp tone. Another foot closer and I’m going to kick him in the mouth, see if a few missing teeth aren’t going to bring his ego down to mortal level.

  “The clurichaun!” Arthur says, shaking my jacket in my face.

  I raise my eyebrows. “Isn’t he in the house?”

  “Obviously not. We thought you took him!”

  I shake my head. “He was cold, so I gave him my coat, but then I left him in the kitchen. You mean he’s gone?”

  Arthur looks at me with an air of disgust. Percy laughs next to me.

  “You gave him your coat?” His laugh grows louder. “Mercy, but I’ve ’eard ’em all.”

  “What now?” I ask, tired of being treated like the village idiot.

  “You do realize our uniform’s got metal weaved in its threads?” Percy asks before exploding in laughter once more.

  It dawns on me then that, while I wanted to help Nibs, I probably only increased his pain by putting my iron-meshed jacket on him; I might as well have finished him. A good thing he escaped instead, unless…

  “You-You don’t think that whatever’s taken those people away got him too, do you?” I ask, my eyes darting about like a pinball.

  “It’s a possibility,” Arthur says grimly.

  “You know,” I say in a failed attempt at sounding debonair, “I’m famished. Could we stop for some food on the way home?”

  It’s the cue for everyone to head back to the little boat, still waiting where we anchored it.

  The ride back to the mainland seems longer somehow, and much more quiet, the lack of Nibs’s presence weighing down on our shoulders like Christ’s cross.

  “Give me the keys, Morgan,” Arthur says with a resigned tone. “You stole Irene’s car and don’t even have a driver’s license. This is not going to be pretty when we get back.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” I say, handing him the keys nonetheless. “I… borrowed it.”

  Arthur doesn’t reply and gets in. I hurry into the passenger side, afraid he may leave me stranded as a form of punishment. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made me walk thirty miles at night.

  “Seat belt,” he says, turning the engine on.

  We arrive home past midnight. Casting furtive glances around in case Irene may be lurking about, waiting for me, I get back inside the house. But the place is deserted, except for Ella, who can be heard moving around in her kitchen downstairs.

  I let out my breath, which I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Guess you’re lucky,” Arthur says, shutting the door. “Irene and Luther are out.”

  “I noticed, thanks.” But I grin despite myself. “Are they often gone like this?”

  Gingerly, Arthur shrugs ou
t of his coat. “Mostly. They’re in charge of the Americas, so it keeps them rather busy.”

  “What do you mean, in charge?” I ask, hoping Ella’s got some sandwiches ready.

  “The Fey don’t remain in only one spot, Morgan, and a number of them live in the surface world. They need to be kept in line which means we have to constantly watch over what they do.” He cocks his eyebrow. “Haven’t you been paying attention in your lore class?”

  I scowl at him.

  “You should,” Arthur says. “If you had, you would have learned that, back in antiquity, Fey people lived in broad daylight. Due to their powers, they were able to subjugate humans, and often used them as pawns in their power plays. And that is why we have to defend ourselves, unless we want to become slaves to them once again.”

  “Yes, yes, I know all about Carman and stuff,” I say.

  “It’s not just her, Morgan,” he says, looking tired. “They all did it. They all liked to play God.”

  He turns away from me and heads up the stairs, his arm held tight against his chest. I grab on to his shirt to hold him back.

  “You’re bleeding!” I cry.

  He tries to shield his arm away from my prying eyes, but it’s too late, I’ve seen the blood dripping freely down his hand, soaking up his shirtsleeve. How could I have not noticed it sooner?

  “You’re getting it all over the rug,” I add before he can deny it.

  “I’m fine,” he says, “just a bite.” He rushes up the stairs, and a moment later, I hear his bedroom door close.

  Stomach grumbling, I hurry to the kitchen to pilfer some food. Ella, like a fairy godmother, has left two plates of cold pasta and chicken on the counter for us. I silently thank her, then rummage through the drawers and cupboards until I find the emergency kit.

  Then, grabbing the two trays as well, I make my way to Arthur’s room.

  “Coming through,” I say, managing to push his door open without spilling or dropping anything. “Aaaand you’re half naked.” I turn around and close my eyes. “So, so sorry. I…That is your flesh…wound…blood…” Saint George’s balls, my brain’s just been liquefied.