Bailey Morgan [2] Fate

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I wasn't sure we could believe anything James said. Every interaction between the two of us had been based on a lie.

  Zo had a different reservation. “I'm all for figuring out exactly what it is that the scary chicks do, but I'm not crying about bald Jessica. How many times has she made fun of other people's hair? If you ask me, the girl deserved what she got.”

  “And that's the crux of it,” Annabelle said. “This wasn't just random malice. This was punishment.”

  I swallowed hard at the words. What was it Kiste and Cyna had said the night before?

  She is mortal. She can be punished.

  And the others kept telling them that I hadn't done anything wrong. Yet.

  “The Furies,” Annabelle said. “They're either vengeful or just, depending on your perspective, but in Greek mythology, they punished evildoers and brought justice to murder victims.”

  Our high school wasn't exactly ripe with murderers, but we had jerks aplenty, and apparently that provided Kiste and Cyna with suitable targets, too.

  “They threatened me,” I mused out loud. “Kiste and Cyna. They said that if I stayed in this world, that would be a selfish decision, and that as a mortal, I could be punished.”

  “So they're blackmailing and threatening you?” Zo asked. “Have I mentioned that I really hate the Sidhe lately?”

  On the one hand, I was Sidhe. On the other hand, I completely concurred with Zo's statement. Even Adea and Valgius, who were supposed to be my family in that world, hadn't tried to help me the way my friends were helping me now. And maybe that wasn't fair, maybe they couldn't help me, but still, I wasn't feeling happy, fuzzy feelings toward any member of my ancient race.

  Annabelle pulled a notebook out of her bag and began to flip through one of the packets she'd handed out the day before. “The Furies,” she said, scanning her notes. “Also known as the Erinyes. They're the daughters of Ouranow, and there are thought to be three of them: Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.”

  “Three?” I said, but seconds later I came to the conclusion that I'd just wasted a question mark. Of course there were three Furies, just like there were three Fates and nine Muses. Three was a number of power in the Otherworld, and I didn't have to think for very long to figure out who the third Fury was.

  “James.”

  The others looked at me.

  “He's the third one,” I said, my voice dull. He'd already lied to me and used me. Why should the fact that he was evil come as a surprise? “James and Kiste and Cyna are bound together somehow. They act like they own him, and he wouldn't tell me who he was or what his powers were.”

  If he was a Fury, no wonder. “I extract vengeance in the cruelest of ways” wasn't exactly what I'd call a good pickup line.

  “Remind me to hurt that guy later,” Zo said, and I wasn't sure which had inspired her wrath more: the fact that he'd tricked me, or the fact that I'd actually liked him. It definitely wasn't Jessica's baldness, which Zo still seemed to think was brilliant, even now.

  “We don't just need to hurt him,” Annabelle said. “We need to stop him, stop all of them. If we can figure out a way to combat the young ones, that will buy us some time to try to fix the barrier.”

  And if we could fix the barrier, I filled in silently, if we could fix me, I might not disappear from this world and my friends' lives … forever.

  “So let me get this straight,” Zo said, once I'd given them an overview of the major players. “We're supposed to find a way to attack the Muses, the Furies, Aphrodite, Artemis, Cupid—”

  “Eros,” Annabelle corrected.

  “—and whoever this Xane guy is supposed to be, and we have to figure out a way to do it in the next …” Zo checked her watch. “Half an hour.”

  “Don't forget the adults,” Delia chimed in. “That's going to suck even more than the rest of it.”

  It was hard to believe we'd been talking for so long. It was light outside, and we didn't have much time before school. There was no doubt in my mind that Eze and Drogan would launch another attack today. The only question was how far they'd be willing to go and how many humans they'd be willing to hurt to gain my compliance. I had a sinking feeling that the answers to those questions were too far and too many. Yesterday had been bad, but no one had died or anything like that. What if James had been telling the truth when he insisted the older Sidhe were more sinister than the un-Reckoned “young ones”? What happened if Drogan and Eze decided I needed more of a push? What happened when the Furies—or someone even worse—stopped making people go bald and started taking their lives?

  It sounded so silly, the idea of Greek myths going on a massacre at my high school, but I couldn't ignore the possibility. I couldn't let that happen, not when this whole situation was my fault. If I'd managed to keep my own balance, if I hadn't spent weeks freaking out about college, if I hadn't been seduced by the Otherworld that first night …

  I didn't have time for these kinds of thoughts. I couldn't help that my life was in transition. I couldn't help that I was half human and half Sidhe. I couldn't help that somehow that added up to something Very, Very Bad.

  “We'll think of something,” Annabelle promised, her voice quiet but firm. “We have to.”

  “If we still had our powers,” Delia said, “I'm sure I could transmogrify our way out of this.”

  Zo ran her hands over her necklace and fingered the charm lying on her collarbone. “You know, Morgan may suck less than the other Sidhe, but she isn't exactly my favorite person right now either. Sophomore year, she gave us powers that we could actually fight with; this time, all she gave us were these necklaces.”

  “They let us see Sidhe who come into this world,” Annabelle said, fair to a fault. “And they kept Bailey from drinking in the Otherworld.”

  “Lot of good that's going to do us when it comes to taking down the Muses,” Zo said. “We'll be able to see the enemy, but what can we do to them?”

  Delia cleared her throat, and when none of us responded, she cleared it again.

  “Yes?” Annabelle said dryly.

  “Never underestimate the power of accessories. Remember yesterday, when you had me researching the necklaces, A-belle?”

  Annabelle nodded.

  “Well, I couldn't find anything like them online, so I had to get creative. I think they're silver, and apparently that's, like, really poisonous to fairies and werewolves. And they're ringed circles, and circles are thought to be the most magical shape there is. In a lot of myths, circles are way more powerful than pentagrams.”

  “Stonehenge is a circle,” Annabelle said. “So are a lot of other ancient monuments. And there's got to be something magical about pi.”

  “I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that,” Zo told her cousin. Annabelle made a face. Delia, used to their antics, even in times of crisis, continued on.

  “And then I looked up myths on mirrors, and there are, like, a ton of them. There's one with that Greek guy, Perseus.”

  “He killed the Medusa using a mirror,” Annabelle supplied. “Because looking at her straight on would have turned him to stone.”

  “And mirrors are used all the time for scrying,” Delia continued, “like Zo used to do back when we had our powers. According to some sources, mirrors have also been used as portals to other worlds. Maybe that's why our necklaces let us see things the way they really are. They connect us to other realms. There's got to be some way we can use that. Maybe we can use our necklaces to send the Sidhe back where they belong.”

  That was a thought.

  “And then,” Delia said, on a roll, “there are all these stories about how some people used to think that your reflection in a mirror was really your soul. That's why it's bad luck to break one. You might trap your soul in the mirror forever.”

  “And hey,” I said, “worse comes to worse, these things are really sharp.”

  Zo laughed. “Yeah, Bay, I can see it now. ‘You guys may have mind-boggling superpowers, but we have the Necklac
es of Doom! Beware!' ”

  “It's better than nothing,” Annabelle said. “And right now it's all we've got.”

  That was a sobering thought.

  “Do you think Morgan would come if you could figure out a way to call her?” Annabelle asked after a long pause. “If mirrors can be used for scrying and as portals, then maybe we can use them to communicate, too. With Morgan on our side, we'd stand a chance, at least against the younger Sidhe.”

  “I'll try,” I said. We didn't have very long before we left for school, and we hadn't come up with any alternative plans. The others sat very quietly as I picked up my necklace and gazed into the little mirror. At first, it showed me exactly as I was, but as I stared at my reflection, it changed, until there was a sparkling undertone to my skin and my eyes had paled. What little hair I could see glowed both colors—brown and blond— instead of neither. The changes were subtle, nothing compared to the way I looked in the Otherworld, but they were there.

  In the mirror, I wasn't human, and I wasn't Sidhe. I was something in between, and I had to accept the fact that this mirror showed things as they were. I could never really belong to one world or the other. I belonged to both, and as I gazed into the mirror, I was overcome with the thought that though Eze and Drogan were wrong to try to force me to choose their world over mine, I couldn't renounce the Otherworld either. There was no choice for me but to live in both worlds; it could be no other way.

  I wondered if this was Morgan's wisdom, if maybe she was communicating with me through the mirror, but as hard as I tried to see her, I couldn't. Some scrying tool/window to another world this thing was.

  Please, I thought, gripping my necklace tighter and praying that Morgan would hear me. I need your help. You're the only one who can help us.

  The surface of the mirror trembled and then a new picture took its place.

  Alec.

  Can he help us? I thought. Is that what you're trying to tell me?

  The image changed again, and I found myself looking at James.

  Not him, I thought vehemently. He's the one who got me into this.

  Alec again. Then James. Then Alec. Then James. Back and forth, again and again, in the span of only a few seconds, the mirror showed me my crushes, until I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get either of them out of my mind.

  Alec. James. Alec. James.

  I wish you'd talk to me, I told Morgan silently, sending every ounce of psychic power I had to the mirror. I wish you'd tell me what I need to know. Is there a way out of this? How can there be? Would you have given me this necklace if you didn't think there was a chance?

  Why won't you help me?

  Alec. James. Alec. James.

  Their images faded into each other, until I was looking at both of them at once, a person who was Alec and James, but not quite either of them.

  Things must unfold as they must, Bailey. Morgan spoke from the mirror to my mind, as I stared at the picture of the first two guys I'd liked in a very long time.

  You know that better than anyone. Open your mind to the possibilities you refuse to see. Remember everything you've learned. I've given you everything you need. The answer is there. You must be the one to find it.

  And then Morgan's voice was gone, and I found myself staring at the Alec/James hybrid again.

  And that's when the little cartoon lightbulb appeared above my head.

  Alec and James, James and Alec. The two of them at once. The way I'd never seen Alec before this week. The way James had seemed to know me better than he should have.

  The way Alec had been present every time something weird happened.

  The way James had felt far more human to me than any of the others.

  The way that Kiste and Cyna had been so possessive of James. The way that they'd warned me to stay away from Alec in that same possessive tone.

  It was so obvious, so crystal clear, that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.

  Lyria's strong in the glamour, changing what other people see when they look at her. It's a skill we all share, but some are better at it than most.

  I'd never once looked at Alec in my mirror. Standing there, I knew beyond all shadow of a doubt what the mirror would show me, but at the same time, I couldn't believe it.

  Without saying a word, I grabbed the packet out of Annabelle's hand and started scanning the part about the Furies, looking for something that would tell me I was wrong, but instead I found the opposite.

  There were three Furies.

  The Greeks had called them Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.

  “Alec Talbot-Olsen,” I said out loud. “Alec T-O. As in Alecto. Very clever, James.”

  The others stared at me, and I realized that they hadn't been privy to my conversation with Morgan or what I'd seen in the mirror.

  “Alec is James,” I said. “I don't know why, maybe he wanted to spy on me or something, but James and Alec are the same person.” I shoved the paper at them. “Look.”

  “Your geek is a Fury in disguise?” Delia asked, wide-eyed.

  I didn't reply. I was too busy thinking that my “geek” was about to get his butt kicked, Fury or no.

  I stalked toward study hall, armed only with righteous indignation, my necklace, and the hope that somehow, while I vented my anger on Alec/James, Annabelle would manage to puzzle out the solution Morgan had spoken of. Apparently, I had everything I needed, but the only “solution” I'd been able to come up with involved me making James/Alec/Whatever regret that he'd ever even thought of doing this to me.

  When Kane dumped me, I was sad, but now I was ticked. My hair crackled as I walked, fury leaking out of my body in the form of tiny sparks.

  The second I found James, he was a dead man. Or a dead fairy. Either way, he was going to be sorry he'd ever even thought of playing me.

  “Bailey.”

  The fact that he was the one who found me took the tiniest bit of wind out of my sails. Luckily, I had POed wind aplenty.

  “You.” My voice was one hundred percent accusation as I whirled around to face “Alec.” I could feel my body temperature rising, and it took everything I had not to let the fire leap from my blood to his flesh.

  “You,” he said, repeating my greeting and offering me a shy smile, like the two of us had just exchanged terms of endearment. I had to wonder what part of the hint of flames in my hair made it seem like patronizing me was a good idea.

  Wishing my position as the Third Fate came with laser eyes as well as pyrokinesis, I glared straight through him.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Oh, we'd talk all right. The palms of my hands twinged, and when I looked down, I realized that I was holding two matching flames. Each tickled and caressed my skin, and I had to actively tell myself that the hallway right outside study hall was in all likelihood not the best location for me to demonstrate the fringe benefits of my Otherworldly blood. With a great deal of effort, I clenched my fists and doused the flames.

  Then, moving slowly and deliberately, I raised the pendant around my neck, angled it toward the boy in front of me, and looked down.

  Even though I expected to see James's face staring back at me, I wasn't ready for it. There hadn't been any doubt in my mind, but knowing something is true and staring down the proof are two very different things, and I couldn't help the bit of fire that leapt onto his shirt, burning a small hole in one of the shoulders.

  “Ow!” James, still wearing his Alec guise, jumped back. “Hey, cut it out, Bailey.”

  “Why?” I said. “Is it wrong? Are you going to punishme?”

  James looked over his shoulder and then, without a word, he reached out, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into a nearby bathroom. It was uncharacteristically deserted, and the moment we were alone, James let go of my arm and shut the door behind us.

  “Sheesh, Bay. Get it under control,” he said, shaking out his hand. “I burned myself just touching you. If you're not careful, you'll burn down the entire school.”

/>   “Isn't that what you want?” I asked. “Don't you want me to do something wrong, so you and your little skank patrol can have an excuse to hurt me even more? And hey, if I burn down the school, I'll probably feel really bad and then I'll see that Eze and Drogan were just looking out for me when they tried to tempt, guilt, and blackmail me into leaving my entire life behind and becoming their personal butt monkey.”

  “Butt monkey?” he repeated skeptically.

  Clearly, his crash course in human behavior hadn't included slang used by Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  “Bailey, I know you're angry, but—”

  “What tipped you off?” I asked. “Was it the heat rolling off my body, or the fact that I hate you?”

  “You don't hate me,” he said softly. “You want to. There's a difference.”

  What I heard was: Please, light my pants on fire.

  “Okay,” I said, and James breathed a sigh of relief … until his pants burst into flames. He yelped, and with a flick of his wrist, the fire was gone. As the flames disappeared, so did his glamour, and as the Alec visage dissolved, the expression on James's face stayed exactly the same.

  “We don't have time for this,” he said. “I hurt you, and I'm sorry about that, but right now we have bigger problems.”

  “We?” I repeated. “There is no we. There's me, and there's you.” My voice broke, and to keep sadness from encroaching on my anger, I babbled on. “It's bad enough that you lied to me, that you used me, but did you have to do it twice? As two different people?” I probably should have stopped there, but I didn't. “Did you have to make me like you twice? Was once just not humiliating enough?”

  “It wasn't like that,” James said. “I was following orders.”

  Because it made me feel so much better to know that he'd played me because someone else had told him to. This was as bad as being the girl who gets asked to prom on a dare.