The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1)

by Marina Finlayson

  It was peaceful up here, an oasis away from the crowded narrow streets of The Rocks. Hardly anyone was about, just a man walking his dog and a family on a picnic rug under the trees. It didn’t seem like the kind of place to feature prominently in magical history.

  Simon led us across the grass away from the observatory. We passed a war memorial and stopped at a stone bust.

  “Hans Christian Andersen,” I read.

  “The Dutch guy who wrote all those fairy tales?” CJ asked. We’d certainly read our fair share of fairy tales over the last two weeks.

  “Danish, actually,” said Simon.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “It’s ironic, really. He’s only a new arrival—a present from the Danish royals in 2005—but they managed to put him almost exactly on the spot where the anchor once stood.”

  “What anchor?” CJ asked. She was gazing out at the view and was only half listening. She probably thought he meant some ship’s anchor, but I’d been doing my reading, and I knew what he meant. Finally, someone was talking to us about the secrets of The Gilded Cage.

  “The Spear of Lugh. It formed the southeast anchor of the great condensor built by the warders when they relocated the Sidhe prison.”

  “When they moved it to Australia?”

  “Yes. It didn’t move the Sidhe world anywhere—that exists on another plane altogether. Another dimension, if you want to call it that. But having the prison in the Northern Hemisphere made it too easy for them to worm their way out again. The first condensing was supposed to destroy all the existing portals between our two worlds—but there were a lot. Every second damn hillock in Ireland alone was a fairy hill, or an entryway to their world. That’s how they got their name: ‘Sidhe’ means ‘people of the hills’ in Gaelic. After Cottingley the warders decided to move it, to stop the random escapes. There always seemed to be another portal that they’d missed.”

  “And that’s what condensors do? Suck aether away?”

  “Aether and Sidhe. If the warders wanted to they could condense Puck right back where he came from.”

  He was pacing out a circle with the bust of Hans Christian Andersen roughly at its centre, checking something on his phone and adjusting his perimeter as he went.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking the seals,” he said.

  “You have an app for that?” Warding had certainly come into the twenty-first century.

  “The app shows me the markers. I could find them myself, but it takes longer. It doesn’t check them; I have to do that. It takes latency to feel their resonance. We still haven’t managed to come up with anything electronic that will do the job.”

  “What about the Hendrix counter?”

  “That measures the presence of aether. If the seals are holding, there shouldn’t be any.”

  I watched him curiously. He was pacing anti-clockwise, and I suddenly remembered something I’d read about entering fairy hills by circling them widdershins.

  “And what are the seals sealing exactly?”

  “The power of the Spear of Lugh. It’s an ingenious system really—it uses the Sidhe’s own magic against them. The power of the four anchors is sealed into the earth at the four anchor points. The original spell linked the anchors into a net that created one giant portal to suck the aether and all the Sidhe out of the world. The second spell moved the prison and made sure of it. Now the residual power’s enough to hold that portal closed so the Sidhe can’t get out.” He grimaced. “At least, that’s the theory. Obviously things haven’t been working so well in practice lately.”

  “Obviously.” One hand went to the collar I wore around my neck as living proof. At least Emmet’s version had less pointy bits than the quick job Dad had knocked up the first time.

  “How many times do you have to walk round that circle?” CJ asked. Clearly she would rather be somewhere else. Probably back at the markets.

  “Seven times. Seven is a powerful number in magic.”

  “People must wonder what the hell you’re doing sometimes,” I said, but he didn’t reply.

  He stopped, frowning, and glanced down at his phone, then continued on more slowly. On the next revolution he paused again at the same place and sniffed the air. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “What? Is something wrong?” I trotted over and sniffed too. “I can’t smell anything except … um … burnt toffee?” That same smell had been in Josh Johnson’s bedroom the night Puck cursed us.

  “Burnt toffee?” CJ rolled her eyes. “What have you been smoking? All I can smell is car exhaust.”

  Simon gave me a strange look. “Burnt toffee’s a pretty good description, actually. Are you sure?”

  I nodded, mystified.

  “That’s the smell of aether,” he said. “And if you can smell it even when you’re wearing that collar, your latency must be off the charts.”

  CJ looked away and I felt a quick pang of guilt. But it wasn’t my fault! And if all latency meant was that I could smell a bit of aether, it wasn’t anything to be jealous of either.

  “But why is there aether here? There shouldn’t be, should there? What does it mean?”

  His expression was bleak. “It means someone’s been messing with the seals.”

  “Who? A Sidhe?”

  “No. There’s too much iron here. It must be one of us. One of the seekers.”

  “Don’t look so horrified,” CJ said to me. “They’ve been talking about a traitor for weeks.”

  “I know, I know. I just don’t get why any human would be trying to let the Sidhe back in.”

  “We can worry about why later.” Simon’s mouth was a grim line. “But if we don’t find out who and how soon, we’re going to be up to our armpits in bloody fairies.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Late that night I was still tossing restlessly, unable to sleep. I wasn’t used to sleeping in air-conditioned buildings: I’d get too cold and pull all the blankets up, only to overheat and have to throw them off again. In the other bed CJ was breathing softly, one hand thrown up beside her face, fingers gently curled. Her dark hair fanning across the pillow reminded me of Kerrie’s, and I shivered.

  Emmet and Dena were no closer to a solution for the warder’s pretty sister. Dad was still a bear, though Mum had finally succeeded in getting clearance to bring him back to Sydney. They were due to arrive late Tuesday, which would be the second day of school. Sergei was still an ogre, and CJ and I at least had our collars, but the underlying problem remained. We were just lucky that ours manifested itself in a way the collars could fix. In the other victims the magic was buried too deep for such easy solutions.

  I pulled my clothes back on, let myself out of the visitors’ suite and padded down the dark hallway. There were night lights on for security in some of the offices, but the hallway was only lit by the streetlights coming in the big arched window at the end. I pressed the button to call the lift—might as well go down to the kitchen and grab something to eat. I wasn’t even the tiniest bit sleepy.

  The chime of the lift arriving sounded so loud in the stillness that I jumped. I stepped inside and raised my hand to press “G”. For an instant it hovered there, and then I pushed “B” instead. What the hell, it was worth a try.

  The dungeon level, as I thought of it, was darker than level 1. No windows. I padded down the hallway, my bare feet making no noise on the cool tiles. The faint hum of servers greeted me as I passed the computer room, then faded as I approached the corner leading to the vault.

  I took a deep breath, then peeked round the corner. Too much to hope that there would be no guard there just because it was the middle of the night. The side corridor blazed with light and, sure enough, a guard sat in the chair just outside the double glass doors at the end of the corridor.

  Despite the bright lights, though, the guard was asleep.

  I took a hesitant step around the corner. Wow, that looked uncomfortable. The man’s head rested against the wall, tilted back
almost at a right angle to his neck. How could anyone sleep like that?

  I crept down the corridor. He would wake up, for sure, and then what was I going to say? It was the middle of the night, and here I was, sneaking around after Dorian had specifically told me to stay away. I couldn’t have looked more guilty if I tried. Yet my feet kept moving, inching me silently closer to the sleeping guard, like I had some kind of death wish. Not even the thought of Mum’s disappointment at me getting into more trouble held me back.

  What the hell was I doing here anyway? Puck was probably asleep, just like I was supposed to be, and even if he was awake, it wasn’t as though he was going to get a sudden urge to reveal the whole Sidhe plan because I asked him nicely. In fact he’d probably think I was just a stupid kid, and I’d already had it up to here with people thinking that. But Dad needed me. He might be arriving home on Tuesday, but he was still a bear, and likely to remain that way forever if we couldn’t come up with some kind of breakthrough. His condition made our frogs and diamonds look like a walk in the park. Someone had to do something.

  The guard snuffled in his sleep and his head jerked to the side. I froze halfway through a step. Please don’t wake up. Please. I waited, heart hammering in my throat, until his head sagged back to its original position and his breathing evened out again.

  Okay, if I was really doing this, it was time to get it over with. My nerves couldn’t take the strain.

  I paused, hand on the glass door. Hope the damn thing doesn’t creak. The guard was so close I could have touched him. I held my breath as I eased the door open, watching his sleeping face the whole time, but the door made no noise, and he didn’t even twitch. I slipped inside and let the door whisper shut, relief making my knees tremble.

  I stopped just inside the door. The lights were low in here and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust after the brightness of the corridor. The dimness was punctuated by bright dots of red, yellow, and green coming from the various monitors and machines in the room. They hummed quietly to themselves, a sleepy night-time song.

  I picked my way across the room to the door to the side room where Puck was being held. A small window was set into it, but there were no lights on inside the makeshift cell. Strain as I might, with the light from the corridor behind me I couldn’t see anything in that glass but my own reflection.

  Suddenly a face loomed there, white and shocking. Bloody hell! I jumped back, swallowing a cry of surprise.

  “You scared me,” I said, trying not to sound accusing, though my heart was doing its best to hammer its way out of my chest.

  The face grinned. It was an odd face. There was nothing about it that didn’t look fully human—no pointy ears or winged eyebrows—and yet something in its expression managed to hint at an inhuman otherness. He still looked as he had the day we saw him in the corridor—a young man with dark hair falling across his face.

  “I should be the one who’s scared.” His voice was muffled by the door between us, but I could hear him clearly enough, though he stood back at least a metre. Dorian had said the iron of the door would hurt him. Maybe that was as close as he could bear. “I’m the one who’s being spied on in the middle of the night.”

  “I’m not spying!” My voice sounded loud in the empty room. I made an effort to lower it. “I was just trying to see if you were awake.”

  “Well, I am, as you can see.” He moved away, disappearing into the darkness until he switched on a lamp by his bed.

  Then I saw why he’d come no closer to the door. He couldn’t: he was chained by a manacle around one ankle to a bracket on the wall. The chain was long enough to allow some movement, but not much.

  He spread his arms wide in a mocking gesture. “Welcome to my kingdom. Won’t you come in and join me?”

  I laid a hand against the door. Opening it would be stupid. I could talk to him just as easily from out here. There was no reason to put myself in danger.

  But he was chained up, and that chain looked like it meant business. No doubt it was made of iron.

  He sat on the bed and crossed his legs. His jeans rode up enough to show the manacle, padded with some kind of thick wadding. Even so, I could see ominous black lines spreading up his leg from it. His foot was a nasty purplish colour and swollen.

  I shoved open the door and marched in.

  “What’s wrong with your foot?”

  “It’s the blood sickness.” His eyes glittered strangely in the half-light from the lamp. “Your iron poisons me.”

  I felt a flash of sympathy. Damn it, I shouldn’t be wasting sympathy on him—it was his fault CJ and I were in this mess. His fault that pretty Kerrie might never wake up. And probably his fault too that my Dad was now a polar bear. I folded my arms across my chest and hardened my heart against him.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked.

  “Because your so-charming warders invited me. It was an invitation most difficult to refuse.” He moved his leg and the chain rattled. “Now ask me why I don’t leave.”

  I shifted impatiently. I could see what everyone meant about it being hard to get a straight answer out of these people. “I don’t mean why did you come here, to this cell. Why did you leave your world and come back to ours?”

  “But what is this distinction you draw?” He leaned forward, his gaze pinning me to the door. With the lamp behind him his face was in shadow, but his eyes glittered, red lights dancing in their depths. Creepy bastard. “Who was here first, child? It is all our world.”

  “I’m not a child.” Mature, I know, but I had no answer to the rest of it, and his eyes were weirding me out. They made me think of demon possession and a bunch of half-remembered stories of things that go bump in the night. Maybe coming here wasn’t one of my better ideas.

  “Of course you are. I can feel it in you. All that power, longing to get out, but they won’t even tell you you’ve got it, will they? The adults all want to keep you in the dark, keep you powerless. They like it that way.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. How the hell did he know that? It was true. No one, not even our own parents, had told us a thing about magic and the world they inhabited until it came knocking down the walls of our reality. They still hadn’t mentioned my latency, or CJ’s lack. The only reason I knew most of what I did was because I’d tricked Simon into giving me The Gilded Cage.

  The Sidhe man laughed and patted the bed. “Come, sit down. I won’t bite. They warned you about me, didn’t they? And they were right to. It’s all true. But at least you know where you stand with me. You should be more afraid of the things they didn’t tell you about themselves.”

  “I’m fine here.” I might be young, but I wasn’t stupid. I leaned back against the door. Its solid iron weight reassured me. “Go on then, tell me what they should have. And while you’re at it, tell me how to turn my Dad back into a man. Which fairy tale is he from?”

  He laughed, showing even white teeth. “You don’t even know the right questions, do you? Ask them how they anchored their great trap.”

  “They used the four treasures.” I was confident of that one, at least.

  “Then why are the treasures not needed any more? How did they transfer the power from our treasures to their anchors? Ask them about the blood they spilled. Ask them why they shun their own people who are born defective.”

  “What do you mean, defective?”

  “Ask them. See what answer you get. And while you’re there, ask them what else that collar around your neck does.”

  Goose bumps rose on my arms.

  “It stops your curse from making me an outcast,” I snapped.

  He shook his head. Half hidden behind his hair, his eyes gleamed in the dim light from the lamp. “No, child. That’s not all it does.”

  I swallowed, fighting down my uneasiness. It was so quiet in the little room, as if we were the only two people awake in all the world. Why had I come here alone? I should go; he was doing this deliberately, trying to get to me. Trying to dri
ve a wedge between me and the warders. Dancing all around, refusing to give me a straight answer to anything. But I couldn’t help myself; I had to ask.

  “What else? What else does it do?”

  “Take it off.” He sat perfectly still, a statue of a man, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was a predator, and I was the dopey herbivore that was about to become lunch. “Take it off and you’ll see.”

  “And then you’ll tell me how to help my father?” There’d be a few diamonds to tidy away before I left, that was all. He couldn’t hurt me, surrounded by iron.

  “Then you might be able to help your father without any assistance from me.”

  Without taking my eyes off him, I reached behind my neck and undid the clasp that fastened it.

  “So? Nothing’s changed.” With my free hand I caught the diamonds that fell.

  “Can’t you smell it?”

  Oh, my God. There it was again. Burnt toffee. I groped behind me for the door handle. There was aether in the room, and he was a Sidhe. I had to get out.

  “Be calm. You are in no danger. The aether is within you.”

  I froze, half in, half out of the room. He still hadn’t moved from the bed. I was torn between flight and a desperate desire to know more. Dad needed help. If Puck so much as lifted a finger, I was out of there …

  I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. Let’s hope this cat could survive its curiosity one more time.

  “You mean the aether from your curse? That’s what I can smell? Then how come I couldn’t smell it before?”

  “You’ve been wearing that collar constantly for what? A week? More? The curse, as you call it, doesn’t go away. The collar merely suppresses it. The aether, unexpressed, has built up to noticeable levels now. That is all.”

  With the door half open, the noise of the machines in the other room was more obvious. Somewhere a clock ticked away the night, loud in the darkness.