by Skye Allen
“Like I said. Boys. Thought he was being clever—nobody would look there. And I don’t know how sealed it is. I’m good at teasing things out.”
“Oh, are you?” We looked at each other. I felt the blush creeping over my face, but I didn’t look down.
And then we were kissing. Her body was all along mine, belly to belly, fingers interlocking. I felt myself melt. “Hey, hey, we’re on a dangerous mission here,” I said when I caught my breath.
And I heard, faint but unmistakable, a steady jingle downstairs. Footsteps. Keys. Something.
“Oh shit, Timothy!” I whispered, as Nicky was tugging me toward the wooden staircase that curved around the room. I wondered just how paranoid Timothy was about visitors, with all that rope-ladder, no-door security. We tiptoed up the steep wooden steps as fast as we could and emerged on the next floor, this time with a polished rail where the stairs ended.
Nicky stuck her head down into the round center hole in the floor, listening. I stood next to the staircase with one sweaty hand on the railing and looked around the third floor of Timothy’s hideaway.
This floor was the gym. More ropes hung at intervals from the low ceiling, knotted and swaying. Mounted on one curved wall was a row of knives ranked in size from fat finger-length blades to swords that looked taller than me. A shudder walked down my spine, and I turned to see if the display got any more ghoulish on the opposite wall.
Nicky’s head rose up and she stood, unfurling herself upright again with nothing to hold onto. I thought again how like an animal she was, up on her booted toes, arms arced out like wings behind her until she got her balance. She gave me a wicked grin and set a finger on her lips, then mimed drinking. I strained to filter out the sound of my thrashing heartbeat until I could hear, faintly, water being poured two floors down. Okay. We were safe for now. Maybe he wouldn’t come upstairs.
The wall behind her held more glass-knobbed cupboards. The knives must be the worst of it. I pictured Timothy training here, throwing the little daggers at some target. For God knew how many years. I shuddered again. I couldn’t defend myself if he caught me.
Nicky might be able to run, but not me. I was a slow, fat mortal with no combat skills other than whatever instinct had gotten me out of the Winter Queen’s burned-out theater last night. I adjusted my sweaty grip on Margaret’s diary where my fingers were so tight they were shaking.
Nicky was creeping over to the cupboard wall. She beckoned to me, and I tiptoed as slowly as I could bear to. Thank God for quiet sneakers. She slid down to the floor in front of a curved slab of door and tugged at my pants cuff, looking up at me with an openmouthed grin. She was loving the danger, I could tell. It thrilled her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I slid down beside her and adjusted my hips on the hard floor, feeling the bump of a knob behind my shoulder blades, and looked at the raw pink place on my palm where I’d lost my grip on the rope ladder downstairs and slid a few inches.
I heard heavy footsteps downstairs, and the flat slap of something metal on something wooden. I realized I was holding my breath and puffed it out.
Ssh, Nicky mouthed without making a sound. I looked at her eager face, the dense brows raised to make her round eyes look huge, the place where one front tooth slightly overlapped the other one as she smiled. Under the fear, warm sparks kicked to life in my stomach.
Something rattled—the knives?—and I felt a thud like the familiar first warning motion of an earthquake. My body stiffened. “He’s gone. I think he’s gone,” Nicky said in her barely audible whisper, and she crawled back over to the skylight hole. Her movements didn’t make any sound at all on the scarred wooden floor.
Are you sure? I mouthed.
“One way to find out.” She was cocky Nicky again, exhilaration in her round face as she slapped the banister and leaped down onto the stairs. I seized a knob at random above my head to pull myself up.
The cupboard door attached to the knob swung open. I stood up and started to close it, clamping the slippery diary under my arm, but a gleaming object caught my eye. I opened the square door as wide as it would go and stared into the dark cubbyhole. Three fluted glass jars sat on the shallow shelf. Each was a different shape, and they were sealed with wax the color of dried blood. They were all full of an opaque liquid that glimmered in rainbow colors like rave makeup where the hard light from the skylight hit the jars.
It was the same poison that had been in the syringe last night. The little fey creature had tried to attack me with it when we escaped the Winter Court theater. I was sure.
I wished I’d brought the vicious little syringe-dart with me, but it was at home, probably still in the pocket of the hoodie I’d worn yesterday. I seized the thinnest jar and slid it out carefully. It was lighter than I expected, although the glass looked thick. I tilted it in both hands and watched the liquid inside cling to the sides and slide, slower than water. This had to be the same stuff. I felt my heartbeat thudding in my face as I set the elegant jar back in its place. Timothy has the poison. He was the one who sent that nasty little animal out after me. He’s supposed to be on our side. But he has the poison.
“Nicky?” I called.
“Hurry!” she called back from downstairs.
“Come look at this first,” I said.
She reappeared faster than a normal person should be able to. I opened the cupboard door again and pointed at the jars. Nicky looked at them, and her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Timothy.” She turned to me. “Remember last night, the corn goat?”
“It’s the same stuff, isn’t it?”
“He might have it for some other reason, but yeah. It is,” she said. She looked baffled.
“Can we get out of here now?” I said. She nodded and plunged back down the stairs.
My mind whirled as I raced down, one hand tight on the railing, one gripping Margaret’s diary. Nicky held the rope ladder steady for me as I climbed down, fingertipping the rope with the hand that held the book.
“Come on, we don’t want him to come back,” she was saying, and we dashed for the open door.
Open. It should have been closed, the way we’d left it. Something was wrong. Too late I saw what it was: across the doorway, which was a blinding square of sunny forest in the dim room, were four twists of leaf-green cable. They seemed to flicker, and I couldn’t tell if they were made of the same kind of magic as the path, or if they were just rope.
Nicky pelted for the doorway and recoiled backward like she’d been thrown. She yelped out a wordless pain sound and hunched over, arms across her stomach.
“What happened?” I hovered beside her.
“No idea. Oh my—haaah!” She shook out her arm gingerly. I saw a line of red hatch marks on the underside of her forearm, and when she held it out from her body, I saw that the bottom half of her tank top was shredded. The fabric fluttered under her ribs, and before I could glance away I saw more scratches there, white and deep.
“That looks bad.”
“It’s—ow—I heal fast. But the door. We can’t get out.”
I thought about that. There were no windows I’d seen, other than the skylight, and that didn’t seem like much of a solution. “Well, can you do your door thing with that spell or whatever it is on it?”
“I have a certain way with doors, you’re right. But whatever Timothy put on this one…. It’s security. A trap,” she said.
“Did he know we were coming?” I asked, incredulous.
“Probably not. The man is just one paranoid elf.”
“Would it really be so bad if he came back and…?” I trailed off. The poison. He wasn’t who Nicky thought he was. My idea of how he could hurt us had just gotten a lot more dire.
“Well, I definitely don’t want that to happen. I’d have to explain what I was doing here uninvited,” she said.
She went to the doorway anyway, palming all the way around it like she was trying to find a secret panel. She stepped back and lobbed something at the opening—the gray T-shir
t, it looked like—but it only boomeranged back onto the floor at her feet.
I had an idea. “Look, what if we tried—you know how I have that thing where I can turn some things on or off now? The gift the Lady gave me? I could try it.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I sounded. I wasn’t going to be able to do anything if Nicky, with all her magic, couldn’t get out.
“Good,” she said, and gestured to the door. She was out of breath. How much pain was she in? I couldn’t tell.
I hovered my fingertips near the doorframe, and when nothing happened, rested them on each side of the opening. Off. Let us out, I thought. Nothing happened.
“Try now?” I said over my shoulder. Nicky ripped off a loose scrap of her top and pitched it at the door. Boomerang. It landed back on her boot.
“Um, okay, this is crazy, but what if we try together?” I said, feeling silly.
“Worth a shot, bright little mortal.” And Nicky seized my hand. I set my other palm on the silky wood frame to the left of the open door, mirroring her. Off, I thought again, harder this time.
Nicky took in a long gasp of air and threw her curly head back. “It’s done,” she said, and it was true: the green bands had vanished. I hadn’t felt anything when the magic switch was thrown. Maybe I hadn’t had anything to do with it. Whatever happened might have been all her. Or maybe that was how magic felt: like nothing. Maybe I’d never be able to tell when it was working in me. If that was even how it worked.
She inched toward the open space, leading with one shoulder, but this time she didn’t get bounced back into the room. She was clear, hurtling into the sunlight out past the tower. I raced through the doorway before the spell could reappear. I didn’t want to take any chances.
We ran all the way back up the hill through the woods to the road. The long weeds of the ditch, where the bike was hidden, came into view first. Almost there. Blood drummed in my face as I struggled for breath and tried to remember what my life had been like a few days ago, back when I wasn’t always running from something.
Timothy strode forward from the greenhouse. My gut went tight with fear. In the sunlight he looked like an ordinary college student, in his pale green T-shirt and floppy hair. But his voice was far from ordinary. It came out in a chilled stream as he addressed Nicky. “You would defile my house. The Lady’s grace will be removed from yours. You will be sundered from all that comforts you.”
“First, Timmy boy, it’s not your house, it’s your and your brother’s little playhouse. Big difference,” she replied. She was brash, too brash. She was going to get hurt. But I saw that it was an act. She was moving toward the bike as she talked. “Second, you’re not exactly in the Lady’s favor, are you? I saw you at the revel. And after.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I saw a muscle near Timothy’s eye jump.
The poison. I knew he couldn’t be in the Summer Queen’s favor if he had it. “You’re working against her! You sent that corn goat after me!” I shouted.
Timothy sighed rather than spoke, and his sigh was directed at Nicky. “Hush your pet.” But then he squatted over the ditch where the bike was hidden. I felt the magic this time: a silent, sooty burst that bent all the tall weeds down like a strong wind and seemed to fill my veins with chalk.
Then the feeling passed, and Timothy was gone, and so was the bike.
“Thorny thorn thorns,” Nicky said. “Weasel.” But her eyes, when she met mine, were full of glee rather than anger. “We’re on the right track, though. We got the goods. And you were a demon!”
“Your bike.” I was afraid Timothy would come after Nicky now or get her banished from the Court or whatever his threat meant. If he was working for the Winter Queen, what did that mean? Did Blossom or the Lady know? And all I could come up with to say was your bike? When she was injured? “Wait a minute, your arm! And your stomach—you’re hurt,” I said. There was a grim expression on Nicky’s face now that could be about holding in pain, or it could be fear. I didn’t know her well enough to know which.
“All good now.” And she pulled up her rust-red tank top to show me the smooth skin there, where I’d seen those angry scratches. They were gone.
And Timothy was gone, and for the moment the danger was gone. I gazed at her taut belly. “I still think I should kiss it and make it better.”
“Mmm. Definitely. Later.” We didn’t even touch, but the long eye contact gave me a low, pleasant shudder. Maybe it’s okay, how much I like her.
It was a long, hot walk back down the hill and into town. I tried to sort out what had just happened. “So Timothy’s working for the Winters?” I asked.
Nicky gave a pensive shake of her head. “I can’t imagine he really is. Blossom could tell us more, but Timothy’s always had a curiosity about Winter things. He thinks of it as research. All those weapons? He is one of the Summer Lady’s highest warriors.”
“Research? That’s creepy. He must have sent that goat thing after me, though.”
“Not necessarily. Mayapple—I think that’s what was in the jars—it’s a powerful poison, but it’s not that uncommon,” she said.
“You mean, among people who want to kill me and my sister.”
“Josy.” Nicky stopped walking, forcing me to stop too. She took my shoulders in her hands and looked me full in the face. Her round eyes sought mine, eyebrows knit with concern. “We are going to find the Woodcutter. We know that he and the Lady of Ice want to hurt you. But we know, because Timothy is in the Summer Lady’s own guard, that he does not.”
“He doesn’t exactly love the sight of me,” I said, but I knew she was right. I was just frustrated that I still didn’t know who the Woodcutter was. Part of me had wanted it to be Timothy, just so I’d have an answer.
I looked away, and she sighed and dropped her hands down my arms to take mine. Her skin felt dry and cool. “He may be a prejudiced bag of dung, but the Lady of Sunlight and all her court are bound to you now, just like you are bound to us. To it. Timothy would not hurt you. If he did, he would lose his favor with my Lady.”
“I guess that makes sense. And you guys only have to know me until this weekend, right?” I wondered what it would be like to go back to my fey-free life. I looked at Nicky’s slender fingers curled around mine. I didn’t want to think about losing her.
“Oh, I’m planning on knowing you for far longer. Far,” she said, and grinned, and kissed my fingers. “Let’s walk. I need to tell Blossom about her bike before she hears about it from someone else.”
We didn’t talk much after that. My fingers worked the edges of the diary I had managed to hold on to through running in the woods and the encounter with Timothy, and I used it like prayer beads, one corner for every thought. As we rounded the high curve of the road and the dense woods began to turn into the groomed gardens of people who could afford to live in the Berkeley hills, I asked, “What about—okay, the door at Timothy’s place, the spell on it. I thought my power thing—the gift from the Summer Queen—didn’t you say that only worked if it was a Winter spell?”
“That would figure. We’re not magnets with opposing charges. We’re not different races. Nothing like that. The Summer and Winter Folk are all fey, and all our magic is basically the same—it comes from the same source. He might have picked up a security spell from the Winters, so that might be why your gift worked to unravel it. But magic is more or less inert. It doesn’t choose a side on its own.”
I still didn’t trust Timothy. I mulled over everything Nicky had said as the laurel-scented sunlight baked my bare head, and sweat worked its way through my top. My feet felt bruised by the time we finally reached my house, and I was drowsy with the drop-off of adrenaline and the heat.
A man was sitting on the front step of my house, feet thrust under the camellia bush, reading a paperback book. My heart charged into alarm mode until I got closer and saw that it wasn’t Timothy. It was Neil.
Chapter 11
NEIL STUFFED his paperback into his jacket pocket when I waved at
him. “Hey, chica.”
“Hey! You’re here,” I said stupidly.
“I had to see this paragon for myself. Hi. We met on the lawn a few days ago.” He extended his slim hand to Nicky. I watched their alpha-dog greeting. He had to remind me that I just met her. So he thinks I’m a slut.
I unlocked the front door and cased the place for my sister, who was not on the piano bench. Nicky started the perimeter-prowling behavior she’d done last night while Neil looked at me, eyebrows raised, asking silent questions.
I set the diary down on the coffee table next to a stack of junk mail. I looked at the little book for a second. Whatever that key is that Jerome told me about, it’s in there. I’m about to find out some big secret. I wondered why I was so scared to read it.
“She’s back here,” Nicky reported from the kitchen door just as I heard Laura’s muffled voice. “On the phone.”
“Cool. I’m going to make coffee,” I said. It occurred to me that Laura and Nicky hadn’t met. Awkward. Neil arranged himself on the couch, legs crossed, a look of anticipation on his long face. I felt like I owed him way more than just the explanation he’d been given so far.
I took my time with the coffee, setting four of Mom’s most stable pottery mugs on a wicker tray with spoons and what remained of the milk. I figured Laura would come back inside eventually. I felt guilty about her, knowing what I knew. Knowing that my whole life had changed, and hers, as far as she knew, had stayed the same. For the first time, I was doing something Laura hadn’t already done. Sure, she knew about the Realm, but she wasn’t really experiencing it firsthand if she was earmuffed by glamour whenever the subject of the fey came up. Did the effect wear off, ever? Would she go all woozy every Halloween when little girls in fairy wings came to the door? Not that anyone would notice the difference. My sister’s natural state was already pretty spaced-out.
When I returned to the living room, Nicky and Neil were chattering, each with one arm over the back of the couch. “Hugh Jackman’s too old, though. Right vibe, but it should be somebody in their twenties.”