With a Kiss
Page 5
Chapter Five
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
—Alfred Tennyson, Lady of Shalott
I rushed through the school hallway, fuming. I looked like a complete jerk in front of my family because of that crack head, and even though I was used to it, this time it wasn't my fault. My mother's keys jangled in my hands. She had decided to go home with Dad while I tried to find the baby's mother. But where was she? I rushed backstage with my new baby in tow, past a worried Puck, past the techies and scenery painted with pretty forests and bright clouds.
The hallway to the dressing room was silent besides loud sweeping. I ducked my head, not wanting to talk to anyone. The broom came to an abrupt halt. The band on my head whispered a warning, and my stomach lurched when I looked up and saw the school janitor staring down at me. He wore his gray uniform, neatly pressed. I noted his muscular forearms, the large hands holding the broom handle in a killing grip. His eyes were on the baby. The band constricted painfully against my head as if it sensed the danger, too.
"You going home?" he asked in a friendly voice.
That broke my tense spell, and I nodded. "Just grabbing a few things." I edged past, feeling him watch us while I sidestepped into the dressing room. I slammed the door shut and locked it for good measure. Not for my safety; for everyone else's—I couldn't be trusted in public with this baby. I was paranoid of everything and everybody, and judging by my performance onstage, fighting wasn't beneath me.
The baby cried out, and I set her on the counter next to all the make-up where she couldn't roll off. My legs felt weak, my head dizzy. I turned on the sink, splashing water over my face, desperate to force myself awake. My heart thumped out a dull beat, and with it, a tide of unwelcome emotions I wasn't used to feeling. Fear. Pain. Worry. It all hurt too much. After a moment of intense concentration, I forced all the emotion back down to where it couldn't get to me.
It took me longer than normal to get out of my faery costume and button up my gray jeans with my shaking fingers, but as soon as I did, I collapsed against the dressing room counter and got on my tiptoes to stare at myself through the mirror. I was wearing a crown--well, a tiara. At first glance, it was made of silver—I had no doubt it was of more precious material, like magic. Still, it was way too formal for real life. Instead of a jewel decorating the top like I originally thought, there was a bright star. Halley, wandering star. That was what the faery queen had called me. Would she be able to track me now that I had this thing on? A scary thought.
The baby played with her toes on the counter. With a quick glance at her to make sure she was okay, I worked to get the tiara off. One tug and it made a strange sucking sound. Pain streaked through my head, and I stopped. With my luck, I'd tug my head off with it. I glared at the thing, and tossed up the hood of my hoodie to hide it.
"Don't worry," a deep voice said. I glanced up, seeing my new friend through the mirror. The faery costumes toppled around his feet. He leaned over the baby, his shoulder blades jutting out from his muscular back. He looked like an untamed cat ready to pounce on her. Instead, he played with her toes. She kicked back at him.
"How did you get in here?" I asked.
He spared me a glance. "Interesting costume . . . and I'm not talking the tiara."
He must be referring to my unusual taste in clothes—a green tank layered over a white tee decorated with yellow chicks, which was layered over a pink lacy ribbed undershirt, finished off with lots and lots of bracelets from the Colville Indian tribes at the Omak fair wrapped around my arms. I was fascinated with color.
He shook his head at me. "Ever heard of matching clothes?"
"Ever heard of a comb?" I shot out a response. "You look like you just crawled out of bed." He laughed appreciatively. I kicked over a costume box and stepped on it to look closer into the mirror. A moan escaped my lips when I began to realize the implications of being stuck with a tiara for the rest of my high school career. "I can't take my SATs like this." They were on Saturday, just three days away. I was planning on getting the most amazing score ever and taking it somewhere bigger than this place; New York or something.
"No, you can't take a test looking like that," he said. "I'll pick out something decent for you to wear. Oh, not too decent. Don't worry." He reached over and tugged my hood off my head to check out the tiara. I scowled at him, but let him lift my chin anyway. His fingers were soft on my skin.
I stared at the elegant tiara through the mirror, studying every angle for myself. It would do for our final performance in two days, but it was really the wrong century for this kind of a fashion statement. I sighed. "People think I'm weird enough as it is."
He didn't try to make me feel better about it. "You realize you can't take the SATs with a baby either." His fingers left me to run over the glitter the actresses had spilled on the counters. He sprinkled it over the baby's bobble head. The glitter caught the light in the air, and she tried to catch it. It was like watching a silent film. She was too quiet, the opposite of when I couldn't see her. The faeries must have stolen her voice box to get her to stop crying.
The blond turned from her to watch me. "You're just going to have to get rid of her." It looked like he was weighing his words carefully, like he was making this up as he went along. "That's your only option, you know, return her to her mom."
"Should we call the police?"
"What are you going to tell them?" He turned back to the baby, and she tried to grab at his moving mouth. He smiled down at her. "What do you think, cupcake? Should we call in the professionals for this?" As if she could understand what he was saying, she made a whimpering noise in response. My head lifted. He nodded at the baby as if in understanding. "You think so?" he asked, like they were actually communicating. Faery or no faery—whatever he was—he could not understand baby talk. He steadied his elbow on the counter. His mesmerizing eyes caught mine; they were dark and filled with meaning. "She thinks you can help her."
That completely broke the short spell he had over me. I should report this to the police. And they would never believe me. I stared at the tiara through the mirror, trying to figure out what to do, when I saw a shadow flicker inside the glass. I jerked back, almost falling off the crate of costumes. My own shadow stayed where it was, peeling off my skin like a face mask. I screamed and swiveled, seeing it behind me, a thin black slice of me. My back shoved up against the counter, and I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping everything would go back to normal if I just ignored it. The mirror, my shadow, my head. My heart! My eyes popped back open and nothing had changed. My shadow stared back at me. I turned to the blond, my chest heaving with my chaotic breaths. "My shadow just came off my body. Did you see that?"
He didn't seem bothered by it, just nodded to my shadow in greeting.
The baby beat the swirly toy against the guy's arm. The face of it seemed to reflect snow inside. "The toy," I tried to control the quiver in my voice.
He shrugged. "There's a curse on us until the daughter of the queen takes her rightful place as our princess. That's what you see mirrored in that toy—snatches and images of our homeland wasting away."
He was the one sent by the faery queen. The thought comforted me. He let me take the mirrored toy, and I stared at his homeland. Winter had stayed too long. It was a strange thing to contemplate since we were in the middle of an Omak drought—what we called one, anyway. The toy showed me a bleak and frozen landscape of another world. The fuzzy screen was really falling snow. I looked past it. The trees were dying. A few weak animals. No people or faeries. How long had the baby been gone? A few hours at the most. It didn't look good. We couldn't return her for three more days. "Why was I chosen to bring her baby back?"
"You heard the faery queen. She called you the keeper."
"How did I become a keeper? What's a keepe
r?"
The blond gave me a secretive smile and gathered the pink blankets around the baby, picking her up. Oh. No. He. Wasn't! This guy wasn't taking her anywhere . . . not with the way my head reacted when we separated; and I wasn't in the mood to go anywhere public with either of them. I tried to stop him from going, but he danced away from me with a smirk. "We've got to get some food in her. She could probably use some diapers, too."
My hands fell limply to my sides. I hadn't even considered that. "You really expect me to go out in public with this thing on my head?"
He gave me a maddening grin and headed for the door with the baby in his arms. My fists clenched. The guy knew exactly what that did to me—separating me from the baby, not the grin. With a few long-legged strides, he was almost out of my range. The tiara whispered a warning in my ears, and I charged after them before it could give me a headache that rivaled getting hit in the head with a baseball bat. I hoped my shadow was tagging along too. The mirror was at my back, and there was no way I'd look behind to see what waited for me there. I was afraid of what I might find.