by Laney McMann
I got up, grumbling under my breath. My dance bag lay on the floor beside the bathroom door. I dug through it, searching for my leotard and tights, which all looked dingy from sitting in the stinky bag for too long. With a sigh, I pulled them on anyway, not being able to do much about it, and not caring really, either. I made sure to wear the leotard with long sleeves, not wanting to reveal the Oghams still standing out in stark green contrast to my skin. I kept wondering when they would ‘cool to skin color,’ like my grandmother had said.
Tea sat brewing on the kitchen counter, a large water bottle next to it, and a protein bar, as I rounded the corner from the stairs. I glanced at the tea. The sudden memory of Max handing me the cup he’d made himself the morning I’d found out Benny was a Fae, coursing through my head. I left it sitting on the counter, pushed back the prickle behind my eyelids, and shoved the water and protein bar in my dance bag.
The drink my mother had made for me every day for the last few years—the potion that had been washing my memory—was absent, and although I was thankful for it, I couldn’t help but wonder if erasing the last few months wasn’t a good idea.
That was stupid, though; I’d never want that. Not really.
“No tea this morning?” My mom eyed the cup.
“Thanks for making it, but no.”
A knock on the door caught me off guard, and my mother hurried from the kitchen toward the living room. I rounded the corner after her, and my mouth fell open.
“So, I’m here,” Benny said from the threshold. “At your service. Whatever.” She made an outlandish and sarcastic bow toward me, a large duffle bag hanging over her shoulder, white blonde hair pulled into a perfect bun. “We don’t have to talk, or be friends, but I am your guardian—something I apparently can’t get out of.” She eyed my mother with dislike. “So, until Max—” She stopped and glanced at her feet, likely seeing the hurt expression that crossed my face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
I nodded. “I’m sorry, too. About Sam. And the way I told you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She held up a hand and crossed the living room, toward the staircase. “I’ll be staying here for a while. Until, well, for now.”
“You’re coming to the ballet workshop?” I asked.
“Where you go, I go. I thought we’d already established that.” She stomped up the stairs, the duffle bag bouncing off the back of her knees. “Give me a minute to put my stuff in the guest room.” Fussing with the doorknob, she shoved herself and the bag through, slamming the guest room door shut behind her.
I sighed and looked at my mother. “This oughta be fun.”
“You and Benny have been friends since you were little. I suggest you both remember that.” She turned toward the kitchen, her pink bathrobe swishing the wood floor at her feet.
It wasn’t something I forgot, but I didn’t say that—didn’t say anything at all.
The absence of my car in the driveway didn’t really surprise me, but the presence of Max’s VW Toureg parked in its usual spot caused my legs to shake.
“Grandma Mac wants you to use it. She said Max wanted you to.” Benny held the keys out and dropped them into my open hand before she climbed into the passenger’s seat and shut the door, leaving me gawking in stunned, heartbroken silence, unable to breathe or move.
How am I supposed to just go back to normal like this? Driving with Benny to class every day, pretending everything is okay? Who does that?
Nothing was okay. Not Max’s car parked in front of my house like some horrible taunting reminder of what I’d lost, or my best friend, who obviously hated me now, sitting inside of it. It was like living in a dream world, to find all you ever yearned or hoped for was real, only to wake up and realize the dreams were nightmares instead.
24
The interior of Max’s car was spotless, as usual—all black, smelling of leather conditioner and gardenias. I slid onto the driver’s seat, positioned all the way back to accommodate Max’s six feet height. My legs stuck out straight in front of me. Off the floor. Like I was a five year old kid trying to drive. The leather seat hugged my sides and under my legs, and I fought the urge to leap out and run back in the house. Benny faced away from me, out the window, clearly ignoring my internal struggle.
Moving the seat up so I could reach the gas and brake pedals, I couldn’t bring myself to enter my setting into the car’s internal memory. I didn’t want the car to remember where my seat should be. I didn’t want to be the one driving it at all; I wanted Max to drive, with me in the passenger’s seat.
Starting the engine, I put the car in reverse and backed out of my driveway. Maybe if I left the seat setting to his height, he’d come back. I knew it was a stupid thought—a senseless one—but I couldn’t help hoping it anyway.
The ballet workshop was being held at the local performing arts theatre in the historic district of downtown. Old colonial homes with massive white columns and front porch swings were huddled in neat rows, houses with their own unique personalities, painted in a range of soft colors of baby blue, peach, ochre and faded yellow. The streets were lined with hundred-year-old live oak trees and cobblestone paths. Businessmen and women hustled along, weaving through the crowded sidewalks of people on their way to work. The smell of coffee lilted on the thick morning air, mixed with the ever constant tang of salt from the ocean, and the stench of dead fish coming off the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway at low tide. The bridge adjoining Historia’s downtown and the beaches climbed high, giving breathtaking views of the blue-green water below.
Max’s grandmother lived a few streets from the theatre in her own seventeenth century home, its front columns and wide open porch draped with sweet white jasmine and purple wisteria. Part of me itched to drive over there. To beg her to reason with him. Force him to abandon his stupid effort to protect me by giving up his life to the Fomore. It didn’t make sense to me. Max had wanted to fight before—believed we could win. That we could break the curse, somehow, and truly be together.
Gripping the stick shift with my fist, my eternity bracelet tightening around my wrist, I tried once again to force the thoughts away. They did me no good, and only made me angrier. Too angry. After the shock of waking to find Max gone had passed, the fire inside me had returned, leaving a familiar madness I kept trying to shut down—a fury I hadn’t allowed anyone to see, but I could feel it—returning like an illness that was never cured.
Repeat the words, Princess, and you shall find your doorway. You shall find your beloved. Agrona’s words rattled in my head,as if she were sitting next to me. Mocking me. Like a devil on my shoulder. In my mind’s eyes, I saw her hanging upside from the ceiling in Max’s house, as if her skin would peel away from her bones. I shook my head, hoping her raspy voice would go away. Max would have a heart attack if I went after him. The thought of never seeing him again tore at me, though
There has to be a way to fix this. And why didn’t Sam know where Max was?
Glancing at Benny, I took a deep breath, ignoring the heat building in my veins. She continued to stare out the window, toward the historical buildings downtown. The Theatre towered overhead, three stories tall, as we pulled up. It was as beautiful as it was dilapidated—like so many things in Historia.
We’d learned in school that it was one of the only buildings to remain mostly untouched since the seventeen hundreds, and that the older generations of Historia believed it was haunted. The theatre’s red brick facade was worn and faded, and the mortar crumbled away in chunks. Mullioned windows were glazed over, making it impossible to see inside, and the few stained glass windows were cracked in places. Nothing was more eye-catching than the gargoyles, though. Stately and statuesque, they sat atop the soaring building. Maybe it was the way they kept a silent watch over the city, or how their horned heads and taloned feet gripped the sides of the worn brick, or how the sunlight framed their savage faces—the shadows that were created along their jaw-lines and down their pointed fangs, or the
luminescent glow of stone that seemed as beautiful as it was ghastly, but whatever combination of light and artistic mastery, the gargoyles were no doubt a haunting presence.
They reminded me of photographs I’d seen of Europe, but mostly they reminded me of Justice and Tristan. Justice had told me the gargoyles kept watch over the city from the rooftops. I wondered if this was where he meant, and how many fallen angels there actually were in Historia, supposedly protecting the streets.
As I looked over at Benny again, I realized her gaze was raised toward the roof, also. Probably thinking of Sam. I pulled into the shaded parking lot under a cluster of crepe myrtle trees dotted in white flower clusters. “Ben—about Sam.” I wanted to tell her I’d seen him, try to explain in some way what he’d been like on the beach.
She put her hand up. “I’m not talking about him.”
I didn’t say anything else.
For the first time, there was nowhere I wanted to be less than at dance. I tied the ribbons of my point shoes around my ankles and pushed through my feet onto my toes, standing tall, while Benny sat at my side fumbling with the strap of her dance bag. I wished I hadn’t brought up Sam.
The hot burn of flexed muscles swelled over my calves and up my thighs, as I lifted my leg onto the barre, and a rush of adrenaline ran through my body. I’d missed that feeling.
Breathing in the chalky smell of rosin, sweet sweat, and the heat of the sun penetrating the floor to ceiling windows, I allowed myself to drown in the drone of Ms. Trudy’s voice over the steady beat of Tchaikovsky, and I tried not to think about Max, or where he was. How much I missed him.
Nothing but anger would come of those thoughts.
“But he left you.”
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the voice, and allowed the music filling the dance studio to cloud my mind, my tight, sore muscles to burn through my pain, and the sensation of being somewhere else—someone else—even if only for a little while, to take me away.
25
“So, nothing? At all?” Benny asked.
I shook my head again, staring blindly out of her car window at passing headlights, while she rattled along. The continual rain over the last couple of weeks had created a small flood in the streets, making them slick and shiny, and blurring all the lights together in a fuzz of bleached-out colors.
“I’m amazed, really,” she said. “I mean, Max is seriously keeping his word. It’s been over two weeks.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think he’d hold out, to be honest. I mean it’s you.”
“You’re not very good at this.” I cracked the window to let some fresh air in, and chill bumps rose all over my arms. I was surprised Benny was even talking to me again in a normal way; I figured she must have finally gotten tired of talking to herself. She’d asked me to go with her to see Justice’s band play at The Pub—a start in the right direction to repair our friendship—so I couldn’t say no.
“So, what does Justice play?” I asked in an attempt to change the topic.
“The drums. Sometimes he sings, but—” She fiddled with the radio. “Anyway, Tristan made me promise I’d go and be supportive, since he’s still on healing house arrest, per Grandma Mac’s orders.”
“How is Tristan?” I’d been trying to gear up the nerve to ask. My grandmother had assured me Tristan was better, but Sam had told Justice that Tristan wasn’t doing well when we’d run into him on the beach—not that I’d relayed that message to Benny..
She shrugged. “He’s hobbling around on crutches. Grandma Mac is doing her best.” Her answer was short, to the point, and with little emotion. Like a recorded song heard a hundred times, yet somehow the lyrics sounded wrong.
“Why’s it taking so long? I mean—he’s an angel.” Hearing myself say that word—as if it were a normal thing to say—seemed weird. Regardless of what I knew about them, which still wasn’t much, the existence of real angels was hard to wrap my head around.
Benny sighed. “A fallen angel, Layla. It can take … a long time for them to heal.”
“What’s up with you two? Have you even left his side since the attack until now?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s my friend. Not everyone is as in love as—sorry.”
I averted my gaze.
She cut the engine, after we pulled into the familiar parking lot, and turned in her seat, facing me. “You could stay in the car, if you want. I can just run in and run out. Twenty minutes.” For the first time since the attack, she actually sounded like herself—concerned for my welfare.
“I can’t stay in hiding forever.” I unfastened my seat belt. “But, thanks.”
“You’re sure?” Her eyebrows lifted. “You look a little … don’t take this the wrong way, but you look … bad. I didn’t notice as much at your mom’s house.”
“That’s one way to raise my spirits.” I opened my car door and climbed out, pushing down the crumple in my shorts.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, coming around to my side of the car. “I meant, do you feel okay? Other than the obvious. Are you getting sick, or something?”
“Is heartache classified under illness?” Is anger?
“Don’t joke. People have been known to die of heartbreak.” She peered at me, blue eyes squinting, and for a second, bright yellow wings flashed across my scope, and disappeared.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What?” Her eyes unfocused again, big and wide, as if she was looking through me.
“That faerie thing you just did.”
“We prefer the term, Fae. And I’m trying to see you clearly.”
“Huh?” I backed up a couple steps.
She followed. “Lay, there’s some kind of—” She squinted again, her clear blue eyes lined in black. “What is that?”
“Don’t tell me there’s blood on my neck again.”
“Not blood, but something—like traces of … something.” Her voice trailed off. “As in … residue.” She frowned and swept a finger down the length of my bare arm. “Your grandmother told me she wiped all the magical remnants clean. You sure you feel okay?”
“Just chilly. Can you stop—” I swatted at her. “—messing with me, now?”
“Fine, but it’s the middle of summer. Normal people aren’t chilly when it’s eighty-seven degrees outside.” She turned away.
“Ben, wait.” I touched her arm. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
She turned back, eyebrows raised.
“It’s about The Fallen.” I hesitated, unsure how I should say it. “I thought … aren’t they … cursed? Damned? Demons?” I’d tried to ask Justice, but it hadn’t come out right, and he’d only gotten defensive.
She eyed me for a few beats, as if considering whether she should answer. “The damned are demons—spirits of hell—the Underworld, Netherworld, whatever you want to call it. But being cursed, that’s different. You should know that. You and Max are cursed.”
I glanced away, wondering if I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
She sighed and fiddled with her hands. “I keep hoping you’ll remember stuff like this on your own … since your Oghams—” She glanced toward The Pub, and her shoulders dropped. “It’s so weird trying to talk to you now,” she said. “I mean, I’d gotten sort of used to it—before—keeping the truth from you. I hated it, you know, lying. But now that you’re starting to remember things, I keep hoping you’ll remember … more. More than you do.” She sounded sad. “It would be so much easier. And I wouldn’t feel like I was always betraying Lorelei.”
“What are you trying to say?”
She tilted her head. “You know about The Uprising?”
“Sort of.”
“Well …” She shifted her weight. “… the Uprising and the Fallen … they’re connected.” She lifted her brow, as if I should understand, like she was trying to prod me toward some logical conclusion. When I just stared at her, she groaned. “When the Ancient Fire Born fell, their angels were cast down.
Fallen angels …”
“What …” I shook my head. “Wait a second … what?”
She groaned again, clearly hoping the information would have jarred some locked up memory. It didn’t. “The Ancients were the highest of all the Gods. Greater Gods of the Otherworlds. They had many angels in their service.”
I stared at her in some kind of dumbfounded shock. “And?”
“And the angels who tried to protect their Gods and Goddesses during The Uprising were cursed—contained in that gargoyle shell, like common demons from hell.” She sounded tired. “They aren’t demons—The Fallen. Legend says that the angels who chose to fight against those they served would be spared, and the curse would lift—releasing them.”
I remembered what my grandmother had explained about the Ancient race splitting into two—Greater and Lesser Gods. “But … they didn’t, did they? The angels didn’t fight against the Gods they served?”
She looked away. “No. They were loyal.” She hesitated. “But some of them … after a while, changed their minds.” She entwined her fingers together.
“I don’t understand.”
She backed up until she stood above me on the curb. “Some of the angels—have been getting sick … some are dying. It’s the curse that’s killing them. Their loyalty is killing them. Mairsale has been administering potions, trying to help the ones who’ll allow her, to slow the process down, but nothing is working.”
“I …” I had no idea what to say. “So, Justice and Tristan …” I stared at her.
“Are angels under the Ancients. Sam, too. Among others.”
My jaw dropped further, if possible. Ryan. “So, Sam …”
“It makes sense now—he wasn’t feeling well,” Benny said. “I think he believes what some of the others do—that the curse can be lifted off of them. That they can be freed of it. I think that’s why he left—why he joined the Fomorians.” Her voice caught. “Mairsale … she’s afraid the curse will eventually kill them all. It’s the reason Tristan isn’t well, yet. He isn’t healing as we’d hoped, and …” She swallowed. “No one will tell Max. It would crush him if he knew, but Tristan’s dying.”