by Emma Savant
“Normally, we’d catch this sort of thing before anyone saw it, but this time, this time she posted her nonsense almost a day before we found out. We’ve been overloaded with other things,” he added, like we were about to accuse him of negligence. “Normally, people would think she’d lost her marbles. They’d think she was doing it for the attention. But people are getting less and less careful about hiding our world from the Humdrums.”
He glared at Daniel and me, like we had something to do with it.
“People are getting political about it,” he said. His nose crinkled in distaste. “And there are Humdrums who are getting interested. There are Huntsmen.”
He drummed against the back of the sofa some more.
“Magic hunters,” he said, like the words tasted bad. “Bunch of goddamn conspiracy theorists thinking they’re going to uncover everything we hold dear. They call themselves Huntsmen because they claim they’re going to chase away the ‘big bad wolf’ that’s ‘plaguing our city.’ Mother of Ptolemy.”
The word echoed around my head: Huntsmen. It was the same one Elle had used. The Huntsman was an Archetype we ran into occasionally at Wishes Fulfilled. He usually played a heroic role in our Stories, but this seemed like bad news.
“At least they got the fairy tale and Archetype thing right,” I said.
Again, Daniel shot me a Shut up now look. But again, Dad didn’t seem to care.
“Bunch of thugs,” he said. “Some people can’t leave well enough alone.”
“But the Council will take care of it, right?” I said.
My fingers itched for my phone. I had to know.
“Yes, the Council will handle it,” Dad said. But I caught a faint wave of uncertainty from him. It was a shifting thing that was hard to pin down, like a smell I couldn’t quite identify.
Daniel shifted in his chair, tensing his body as if for protection.
“The Council isn’t in great shape, is it?” he said.
Dad looked at Daniel, and Daniel froze, like he was waiting for the hammer to fall. But Dad’s frown just etched itself deeper into its face.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “We’re not in great shape at all.” He ran a hand through his thick hair. “Just hope Queen Amani is able to get things sorted out,” he said, but in a lowered voice, as though he was ordering himself around instead of us. “We all need to just hope Her Majesty…”
And then he trailed off. Something about her name took his thoughts elsewhere. I watched as his face grew distant, even tired.
“Has she named an heir yet?” Daniel said.
Dad looked up, startled, like he’d forgotten we were in the room. “An heir?” he said. “No.” A line appeared on his forehead that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. It was the curse of all faeries: Everything we felt showed up on our faces, sooner or later. “No, she hasn’t chosen an heir. I doubt she’s had time to try.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. The last of the swearing and fighting spirit he’d had when he came through the door seemed to leak out of him.
“I’m going to go work in my office for a while,” he said. “Tell your mother I’d like to talk to her when she gets home.”
“Sure,” Daniel said.
“You got it,” I said.
We waited until he was out of the room. Then Daniel openly gaped at me and whispered, “What was that?”
I grabbed my phone.
A few taps and swipes, and PursuitOfVerity’s account was up. My gaze ran down the small screen, devouring the words.
You think you’re safe, Aubrey’s latest post said. But how can you be safe when you don’t know who the enemy is? We all live in a #DarkForest.
A few hours before that, she’d posted, They live among us. We can’t see the forest for the trees, if you know what I mean. #DarkForest #Huntsmen
And prior to that, We’re in the #DarkForest. No one knows who surrounds us. Only the #Huntsmen can find them. Only the #Huntsmen can see.
“What the hell is this?” I muttered. I crossed the room and sat on the floor next to Daniel, so we could talk without our voices carrying to Dad’s office. I showed him the texts.
He scrolled down.
“‘A bunch of my posts got deleted,’” he read in a low voice. “‘They’re trying to hide me in a hashtag-Dark Forest. None of us are safe.’ Okay, she’s crazy.”
“I think we’re the forest?” I said.
“I think we’re the trees,” Daniel said. “And I think she’s trying way too hard to make these hashtags a thing.”
I kept reading. All the posts were cryptic. Then, as I watched, a notification popped up on the screen. She’d posted again. I scrolled up.
A bunch of you let me know my old posts disappeared. They’re trying to silence me, she said. If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one to hear, does it make a sound? Read more at my blog. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED. #DarkForest #Huntsmen #ChopThemDown #Timber
They were just tiny black words on a screen, but they creeped me out.
Chop them down?
I clicked the link to her blog. And there was a post, under a banner of—
“A dark forest,” Daniel said dryly. “So insight. Much clever. Wow.”
The photo, of looming pine trees under a dark sky, had the words Follow the #Huntsmen across it in big white letters.
The post was below.
You’ve noticed funny things around Portland, it said. I know you have. You know you have. Let’s not lie to each other.
We have to talk about this.
You want to think they’re urban legends.
You want to think that person you know is just unusual. You know who I mean. The one who gives you goosebumps, who makes you feel like something is off, who makes you look over your shoulder just in case.
You want to think the strange things that happen around you are coincidence.
But what if I told you there was more?
What if I told you magic was real?
“What if I stopped trying to scandalize the world with crappy rhetorical questions?” Daniel muttered.
There are people all around you who have powers you can only imagine. There are witches in the world, practitioners of the occult.
They are strong.
They are dangerous.
I know this, because I’ve been watching them.
A coffee shop I used to visit just disappeared.
That’s right.
Gone.
Poof.
People tried to claim it had never been there. The owner, a girl I speak to regularly, insists the business has become a quiet operation selling coffee beans at the Saturday Market. (The stall is Pumpkin Spice. Ask to talk to Elle. Maybe with enough pressure we can get her to tell us the TRUTH.)
I cringed and made a mental note to warn Elle.
I know better than to believe her stories.
People keep going to the café. They’re hard to catch, hard to see. But they walk right into a wall where the building used to be, and they disappear.
Why do I care?
Because I’m not the only one to have noticed.
Have you seen strange people around? Have you seen hints of things the way they shouldn’t be? Have you felt as if you are in danger when someone different walks by?
Look closer.
You think you’re in a city. You are wrong.
We are all in a dark forest, and the trees are closing in.
Join the fight. Become a Huntsman.
The last three lines were underlined. Just beneath them, a notice said, in large, bold letters, I WILL KEEP POSTING THIS EVERY DAY. THEY WILL NOT SILENCE ME. -VERITY
Aubrey was so, so much more unhinged than I had ever thought possible.
I clicked on the link at the end of her post. It led to a sketchy-looking forum with a black background and stark white letters. And if Aubrey’s article had been weird, it was nothing compared to the stuff here.
Daniel was scrolling on his own phone n
ow.
“This guy claims to have seen a hobbit running across the Walmart parking lot,” he said. “A hobbit. Like we’re in Middle Earth.”
“This one saw an Oracle party,” I said. “He was with a group of people, and it looks like he’s the only one who didn’t have a meeting with an Eraser. He remembers. None of his friends do.”
“This is a whole community,” Daniel said. “This is freaky.”
“Isabelle told me about these guys,” I said. I scanned down an all-caps post from someone who claimed an elf girl had cheated on him. It ended with the sentence NEVER TRUST A DARKTREE. “Some guy’s in Portland filming a documentary on them.”
Daniel sat up. “Seriously? Does Dad know?”
“Yeah, because I totally run to Dad with all my secret Isabelle meetings,” I said
“How’d you meet her anyway?” he said.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I was turned into a newt!, said one of the forum headlines.
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“Too bad. I’d love to hear it except I’m super interested in this history homework.” He picked up the history book he’d abandoned on his lap and dropped it on the floor. I threw out a hand and muffled the thump it made before Dad could hear.
“You really want to know?”
He nodded. For once, he didn’t seem like he was being sarcastic. I twisted so I could rest my elbow against his chair and look up at him.
“This needs to be kept secret.”
“Obviously.”
“No, I mean, like, secret,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone. Not Devyn, not anyone.”
He held out his pinkie. I raised my eyebrow, but he pushed the finger toward me.
I hooked his pinkie with mine. An instant later, the rush of magic flowed between us, sealing his promise not to tell.
“Thanks,” I said.
He waved me off. “So?” he said.
I let out a long breath. The words fought against leaving my lips, but I forced them out.
“Queen Amani asked me to be her heir,” I said.
I waited for the usual Daniel response—a shrug, or an eye roll, or an “I know.”
Instead, his mouth dropped open.
“What?” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
“No, seriously, what?”
“Seriously, Queen Amani asked me to be her heir. I still have no clue why. She saw me in a divination and somehow thought that was a good enough reason.”
“She’s braver than I am,” Daniel said.
“Well, obviously. She’s the Faerie Queen. So I said no, obviously, and—”
“You said what?”
“This isn’t going to work if I have to repeat everything seventeen times,” I said.
Inside, though, I felt instantly warm and like somehow, suddenly, I wasn’t alone. It was such a relief to tell, and such a relief to feel like my own shock and confusion had been justified.
It was crazy. The whole thing, from start to finish, was nuts.
And Daniel got it.
“I said no,” I said again. “And then, a while later, Imogen started going out with a guy I like.”
“Lucas,” Daniel said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it’s, like, very obviously Lucas,” Daniel said. “Go on.”
“Whatever,” I said. “So Imogen and I kind of got in a fight, and by the time I was finally ready to make up with her, she didn't want anything to do with me. And later, come to find out, it’s because the Oracle told her that the Faerie Queen had picked me.”
“You didn’t tell Imogen about the queen?”
His face was a condemnation. The old, familiar heavy feeling in my stomach reminded me that it was still there.
“I know, I suck,” I said. “I didn’t think I was supposed to. It was stupid. Anyway, the Oracle told Imogen. And Imogen was super upset, and she… I don’t know.”
It was hard to explain what had happened that night. I still couldn’t wrap my mind—or my heart—around it.
“She chose the Oracle,” I said, finally. “I’m like ninety percent sure the Oracle had enchanted her. She went into the Fountain, and I’ve barely seen her since. And the Oracle was creepy about it. And then Isabelle showed up because the Oracle screwed her over, too.”
“And now you’re trying to topple the second most powerful figure in the universe,” Daniel said.
He didn’t bother to hide the admiration in his voice. It was stupid to be so flattered by my little brother’s attention, but the warm feeling settled inside like it was there to stay a while.
“Liv?” Daniel said. “That’s badass.”
“It kind of is,” I said.
“I mean, you’re going to die,” he said. “You’re absolutely, totally going to die. Or at least you’re going to get cursed or something. But good for you.”
“Um, thanks?” I said.
My phone buzzed. It was just a text from Mom, saying she’d be home in ten minutes and to turn the oven on to preheat. But I must have hit the Back button, because the screen with Aubrey’s blog on it had reloaded. A new, short post was there.
The week after Portland’s Rose Festival, a witch will perform a terrible spell, it said. The magic-users don’t want us here. This is REAL MAGIC. The spell will terrorize and even kill anyone THEY don’t think “belongs.”
The trees are closing in.
The Huntsmen are all that can save us now.
Grab an ax. Join the fight.
Daniel let out a low whistle. “Yikes,” he said. “She’s like a serial killer. And she’s on a witch hunt. Literally.”
The hundreds of posts in the forum flitted through my mind. They’d all talked about witches and ghosts and aliens, mixing up things that belonged to our world and things that belonged only to their imaginations into one frenzied mess.
“She’s just a girl looking for drama and a way to feel special,” I said. “The trouble is, she’s not alone.”
Chapter Twelve
“I overheard some Hums talking about the Huntsmen on my way to work,” I whispered. Behind the walls of my cubicle, I could hear the voices of the other godmothers, raised and talking fast. “I tagged them with a spell and sent some Erasers after them as soon as I got into work. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else of interest. I hope you’re doing okay.”
I paused, trying to decide if I should say more. But what else could I say? I didn’t even know if Amani was listening anymore. I shoved the silver ring back beneath my shirt. The chain dug against my neck and I considered taking the whole thing off and dropping it in the garbage. Instead, I pushed away from my desk and stepped out of my cubicle.
“Mirror her back and let her know we’re going to have to put off her ball for a couple weeks,” Aster said to her assistant, a new intern named Megan who looked terrified by everything that was happening. She nodded, glanced at me with her big brown eyes, and disappeared into her cubicle.
I went over to the water cooler, pulled my wand out of my hair, and waved a couple tight spirals over my palm. A silver cup formed in my hand with a tiny copper leaf garland twining its way around the base. I filled the cup. I’d thrown about twenty enchantments on the cooler water to keep the Oracle out, but even so, there was no telling how many eyes or allies she had in Wishes Fulfilled.
I wished I could warn the others. But I couldn’t, not without bringing Amani into it or outing myself as being way too involved. Even so, it was impossible to avoid the gossip: The Oracle had been approached by a group of activists who wanted to see the Glimmering world come into the open. The Queen had told the Council to stop accepting assignments from the Oracle until further notice. The local Glim news station had tried to interview a Fountain sprite and been met only with a terse “No comment.”
Around here, everyone thought the gossip was only gossip. The Oracle was still in charge. She still approved our trickiest cases and dispensed the coins that rewarded us for the Stories we res
olved. I didn’t know what my coworkers thought privately, but none of us were foolish enough to say anything against her. Especially not with Lorinda sweeping around, constantly ranting about “Our poor Oracle, being harassed by these agitators!”
“It looks like a few of us are getting moved off our cases,” Aster said. I jumped; I hadn’t heard her come up beside me. She was a tall, lanky faerie with blond hair, thin lips, and the kind of good skin that suggested—accurately—that she was an outdoorsy kind of person who went jogging for fun. “Have you heard anything from Tabitha?”
“I’ve barely seen Tabitha,” I said. “She’s been locked up with Lorinda all morning.”
“That’s not surprising,” Aster said. “Sounds like entire teams of us are being reassigned to keep an eye on this PursuitOfVerity person.”
“Better you than me,” I said.
“You might get assigned,” Aster said.
I shook my head and took a drink. The water felt cool all the way down.
“Lorinda said I’m too big a liability,” I said. “I know PursuitOfVerity.”
Suspicion narrowed Aster’s eyes. “You’re friends?”
“Not in a thousand years,” I said. “She’s awful. But she knows who I am, and she’s seen me at the Pumpkin Spice stall.”
“That’s too bad,” Aster said. “We could have used an inside person.”
“I don’t know why we can’t just wipe her memory,” I said.
Maybelle, another younger godmother with curling brown hair and a pleasant face, sidled up to us under pretense of getting a drink.
“She’s got enchantments on her,” Maybelle said.
I turned to frown at her, but Aster nodded.
“Lorinda mentioned it this morning before you got in,” Aster said. “She’s got at least one Glim on her side. Probably more.”
“Verity’s goals dovetail nicely with all those people who have been pressuring the Oracle,” Maybelle said. “They all want the Glim world exposed, just for different reasons.”
“I don’t know what good they think will come out of it,” Aster said. Her voice rose. “The Glims want us exposed because they want be in charge, and the Hums want us exposed so they can get rid of us. Ugh, people are awful.”