“I’m sure she’s curled up asleep on someone’s lap by now,” Mom says. “I got sidetracked talking to Ash’s mother about the wedding, so it’s been a while since she asked me for the juice.”
Mom doesn’t seem at all worried, but I have an uneasy feeling. “I can get Briar and Grove and we’ll find her.”
Mom smiles at me and pats my shoulder. “No, honey. Enjoy yourself. It’s a glorious night and Percy’s fine. I’ll find her sooner or later.” She walks off calling my sister’s name but is immediately waylaid by another well-wisher, hugging her and exclaiming how amazing Willow is as Mama Ivy’s replacement.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m sad about Timber or if I’m really worried about my sister, but suddenly I don’t want to be in the middle of all this fun. I want some space and room to think and be alone. So I leave my cake on the log and slip off into the woods. I know I shouldn’t be gone long because my family’s going to sing again soon, but if I’m going to be any good in front of everyone, I need to get my head on straight. While I’m walking a big circle around the wooded outskirts of the clearing, I call Percy’s name, just in case she’s wandered too far and can’t find her way back, which is pretty unlikely.
“Percy,” I call quietly. “Where are you, little chipmunk?”
As I crunch over the snow, I wonder what Timber’s doing. He and Kenji should have made it back to Brooklyn by now. I wonder if his mother was furious. If Kenji got in trouble or if his parents didn’t realize he was gone? If Bella roped Timber into more private rehearsals to make up for the time that he was AWOL? The performance is tomorrow night and in true showbiz fashion, it will go on without me. Mostly, I wonder if I still have a boyfriend.
“Looking for something?” a deep voice says. I whip around, expecting one of Ash’s cute cousins to be behind me, but there’s no one there.
“Huh?” I say aloud. “Is someone there?” I peer into the darker spaces between two large pines.
“I said, looking for something?” the voice comes from above me. I feel a deep panic rising inside of my chest. I recognize that voice. It’s coming from a branch of a stately old pin oak tree. I raise my arm, ready to zap Clay if I could see him in the midst of dark branches.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he says, and then I spot him on a large branch low in the tree. He lifts his arm and points to a higher branch above my head. “I’ve got something you want.” I look up and see my little sister suspended from the branch.
“Percy!” I scream. “Get her down now,” I command, and wind up my wrist.
“Not so fast,” he says, and lifts his right arm while still pointing at my sister with his left. “You cast a spell and I drop her.”
I let my arm fall to my side. “What do you want? Let her go!” I yell.
“Hush now, Zephyr,” he says, smooth as snail snot. “You’re just the person I was hoping would come this way. Not some silly cousin of yours skipping off into the forest to kiss new boys from faraway clans. Gads, elves are boring.”
“What do you want?” I demand again.
“Oh, but don’t you know by now?”
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
“Come on,” he says. “You expect me to believe that you don’t know what we’re after? If that’s the case, then you’re all boring and stupid.”
It takes all my will not to zap this pile of badger poop, but I don’t because I know he’ll hurt my sister. “Only the first-firsts know what you’re after.”
“Leave it to the elves to make things complicated,” he says, clearly annoyed.
“If you tell me what you want, I’ll get it for you,” I say.
“Oh really?”
“Yes, but only if you let Percy go.”
“Sure thing,” he says, then he laughs, making the branches quiver. I lift my arms to catch her if she drops. “As if. The minute you go back into that camp you’ll have all those arrow-happy uncles of yours out here shooting us up. They’ve been crawling all over these woods like maggots on a dead skunk.”
“I won’t tell them,” I say. “Why would I? You’ve got Persimmon.”
My eyes have adjusted fully to the dim light, and I can see him smile. Oh how I hate him. “That’s right,” he says, and rocks my sister back and forth until the branch squeaks.
“Stop! Stop it!” I yell, trying to keep my body directly below hers.
“Don’t worry about it, Zephyr. I won’t let her fall. She’s my bargaining chip. I thought that little foxy would get me what I wanted, but that didn’t work, did it?” He pauses. “Because of you and that weirdo half-erdler boyfriend of yours. He should really come and see me back in Brooklyn,” Clay says. “I could turn those hidden powers into something awesome.”
“You leave Timber out of this,” I say.
“Bossy, bossy,” Clay tells me. “That’s why you’re not fun. Now your cousin Briar, on the other hand. She’s a good-time girl.”
“Shut up,” I tell him.
“Oh sissy,” Clay calls. “You can come out to play now.”
Dawn steps out from behind the tree and immediately zaps me before I even have a chance to react. “Slow as sap,” she says, and I feel her spell enter my blood. My arms and legs are heavy, my mouth feels as if it’s full of cotton, and it takes all of my energy to move. “Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?” Dawn teases. Then her voice turns cruel. “I should lay you down and stomp you.”
“Now, now, play nice, li’l sis. We’re going to need her to call on Willow,” Clay says.
“Later,” Dawn threatens.
“Now listen up, cuz,” Clay says. “You’re going to call Willow out here so we can get what we need from that house. Once we have what we want, we’ll give you back this rotten piece of fruit dangling from the tree.” He rocks Percy again and I have to force myself not to react.
“She . . . won’t . . . come . . .” I say slowly and thickly.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Willllllllllooooooow,” I mumble, as if I’m caught on a slow-motion reel.
“Oh for crap’s sake,” Clay says. “Let her go, Dawn. I can’t take listening to her voice like that. She’s not going anywhere.”
“Fine!” Dawn says. She undoes the spell, then crosses her arms and pouts.
I stumble. “Willow,” I tell them. “She won’t leave the clearing. She’s presiding over the celebration. It’s better if you tell me what you want. I’ll go get it.”
“How do we know you’ll come back?” Clay asks.
“Send her with me.” I point to Dawn. “She can wear my cloak. There are so many people here, everyone will think you’re someone else’s cousin. We’ll just walk in and get what you need, then come back.”
Dawn looks up at Clay. He thinks about my plan for a moment. “Not half bad, elfy girl. You should consider coming over to our side. It’s so much more fun.”
I bite my tongue so I don’t spit at him in the tree. “I would never ever become a dark elf. I’d rather die.”
“You might get your wish, yet,” Clay says, and laughs meanly.
I stand my ground.
“Oh all right,” Clay says. “Give her your cloak.”
“But I don’t know what we’re after,” I tell them as I slip off my cloak and hold it out for Dawn.
“Aster’s spring,” Clay says.
I look at him blankly.
“Seriously, you don’t know?” he asks.
“For real,” I say as Dawn takes off her puffy white parka and puts on my cloak.
“The spring runs beneath Ivy’s house. It was dug by Aster when she first got here and made eternal by her magic. You’ll have to find it somewhere below the floor.” Dawn reaches into the pockets of her coat that’s on the ground and takes out two small glass bottles with corks in the tops. “Fill the bottles.”
“Will that heal your mother?” I ask.
Clay flinches. “What do you care?”
“I wouldn’t want my mother to die,” I sa
y.
“Yeah, yeah, pity party for the dark elves,” Clay says. “When you bring the water back, I’ll let this one go.”
“Promise?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “Why not? You have my word.”
I realize that taking the word of a lying dirtbag dark elf is like trusting a snake not to bite you, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.
“Come on,” I tell Dawn, and march forward to rob my ancestral home.
chapter 23
DAWN FOLLOWS ME silently through the woods. In the distance, we can hear music and laughter at the party, which makes me want to run screaming straight to the clearing for help. But I know I can’t do that, so instead, I take her the long way around, toward the front of the house, so that we don’t meet any revelers. We pass my uncle Reed in the woods and I look to him hopefully, but he just raises his hand and waves because my cloak is an excellent disguise for Dawn. He keeps right on walking without so much as a second glance.
Going this way also gives me time to think. I know I have to fill those bottles and take them back to Clay in order to get Persimmon, but I also know that I shouldn’t let Clay and Dawn take the water with them. Then, part of me wonders what would be so bad about letting them have it.
I look over my shoulder at Dawn, who scans the woods around us as we walk. “I meant what I said back there, you know.” She looks at me and cocks her head to one side. “That I wouldn’t want my mother to die either, so I understand why you want the water.” She stays quiet. “But why didn’t you just ask us for help?”
Dawn snorts and raises an eyebrow at me. “My mom and dad were shunned, dumb ass. We can’t just waltz in here and be welcomed with open arms.”
“You could if you came back,” I say. “This wasn’t your choice. You were born into it.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” she says.
I slow down so we’re walking side by side. “Why not?”
“Listen, Goody Two-shoes, it’s not that easy,” she says, but I see a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes beneath the hood of the cloak.
“What would be so hard?”
“I think my mom would have, but . . .” She trails off.
“You could. You can make your own choice.” I want to reach out and touch her arm, but I don’t.
“What? And give up all this?” she says with a mean little laugh. Then she levels her gaze at me. “Look, this isn’t some stupid movie where everything’s going to turn out the way you want it to. It’s more complicated than that, so stop your yapping and get us to the house.”
“You remind me of Bella,” I mutter, as I walk faster.
“What’d you say?” she asks.
“You’re worse than a mean erdler,” I say, then I hurry along the path, ready to get this over with.
For some reason, elves rarely use their front doors (seems too formal, I guess). We all go around the back. So the front of Ivy’s house is dark, but we can hear the party going full force on the other side, plus there are voices all around us coming from the woods, where small groups have broken off to play music and games or talk. We sneak up on the porch, my heart pounding, wishing I could think of something clever to stop this from happening, but I can’t.
“I don’t have a problem giving you this water for your mom,” I whisper to Dawn, standing in the shadows of the porch. “Like I said before, I wouldn’t want my mom to die. But before I do it, I need to know that Clay will let Persimmon go.”
Dawn stands close to me. I see her eyebrows knitted together and the line of her jaw tight. She looks scared and I almost feel sorry for her, only I’ve learned my lesson with Bella many times before. The minute you’re nice to a mean girl, she’ll turn around and snap at you. “We’re not all evil, you know,” she says. “We just use our magic for different purposes.”
“Trying to convert me?” I ask.
“Hardly,” she says. “You’d make a crappy dark elf.”
I’m not sure whether to be insulted or flattered.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she tells me.
“Is the water really for your mother?”
She hesitates, but then she says, “Yes.”
I figure that’s as much of a promise as I’m going to get tonight, so I nod and head for the door.
We pause in the entryway and listen. The front room of Ivy’s house (or should I say Willow’s) is quiet except for the ticking of a grandmother clock with carved wooden owls. The hearth has a few glowing embers, but the place is cold since the fire hasn’t been tended to while everyone’s been outside for hours.
“I don’t know where the spring is,” I whisper to Dawn.
“Beneath the floor in the kitchen,” she says. “We have to find a stone and move it.”
As we tiptoe through the rooms toward the kitchen in the back, I feel a strange tingling all over my skin. It’s not an itchy or tickly feeling, it’s more like the sensation I get right before I cast a spell, only I’m not thinking of any spells, so it can’t be that. I also can’t stop thinking about Willow, and this is the worst part. The image of her in the cloak blazes in my mind. I want to pull her to me, and I have to stop myself from calling out her name. I feel terrible as we creep slowly toward the kitchen because I know that I’m about to steal from my sister.
A dim light from the hearth and a low lantern on the table give the kitchen an eerie glow. “Help me look,” Dawn says, getting down on her hands and knees. “One of these stones will move.”
“There’s probably a spell on it so we can’t lift it up,” I tell her, but she ignores me.
As I crawl around the floor, trying to move stones, the tingling on my skin gets stronger, almost like a surge of power coursing through my blood, and the image of Willow never leaves me. I crawl toward the far wall and the sensation dissipates a bit, but when I turn around and crawl back toward the center, the feeling grows. Once I cross the centerline and head toward the other wall, the feeling wanes again. Dawn has started at the other end of the room and methodically moves from stone to stone, trying to lift each one by working her fingernails into the grout, but nothing budges. I go back to the middle of the room where the tingling is the strongest and I’m almost blinded by Willow in my mind. I close my eyes to concentrate and crawl down the center of the room toward Dawn.
The feeling grows until I’m squirming, then a flash hits me and I bolt upright on my knees. I open my eyes. I’m in the exact center of the floor. Below me is a twelve-sided stone from which all others radiate out. Willow pulsates behind my eyes and I have to slap my hands over my temples to keep my head from exploding with her image. “Here!” I call to Dawn.
She scrambles over to me like a skunk scurrying to a garbage can. We both work our fingers into the grout around the stone, but it won’t budge.
“Move back,” she says.
She pulls out a small pouch. As she unties the knotted leather thongs holding it closed, I hear myself muttering, “Willow, Willow, Willow, Willow.”
“Shut up,” she hisses at me while she sprinkles a line of the powder from the pouch around the outline of the stone. The powder sizzles and smokes, eating away at the grout. “Help me,” she says. We each pry up our side of the stone.
It comes loose with a loud pop, sending us both back on our butts, me with the stone on my chest. For a split second I consider heaving the big rock at Dawn to knock her out, and I know by the strong pulsation across my skin that I could do it, but then I remember Percy hanging from that tree and I stop. We crawl back toward the hole and peer down inside.
Cool air wafts up and the scent of the cold, fresh spring floods the room. I can hear the faint tinkling of running water coming from the dark hole.
“Get the lantern,” Dawn says.
I hurry to the table, then raise the wick as I bring the lantern close to the hole. The reflection of the light sparkles on the water below like a midnight sky full of stars. Dawn rummages beneath the cloak and pulls out the bottles and a small rop
e. She uncorks one bottle, ties the rope around the neck, and lowers it down. I hear the gentle splash as it reaches Aster’s spring and I want to cry. They could do anything with this precious resource blessed by the magic of our first mother. I’m sure it’s more powerful than they’re letting on, and they certainly wouldn’t need so much to heal their mother. But what can I do to stop them with my little sister suspended from the branches of an oak tree?
“You don’t have to do this,” I say one more time.
“I have no choice,” Dawn says. “And neither do you. Cork it.” She hands me the bottle. Then she lowers the next one.
When I take the bottle in my hand, the water roils and bubbles up to the top.
“Stop it!” she hisses at me.
“I’m not doing anything . . .” I say, trying to shove the cork on top, but the water flows over the top of the bottle and back into the spring below.
“Give me that!” She swipes the bottle from me while holding the rope steady with her other hand. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I wasn’t doing it,” I tell her again.
“Right, it just jumped out of the bottle by itself.”
“It did!” I nearly laugh because it sounds so ridiculous, but it’s true. “Aster’s magic is strong.”
Dawn sets the bottle on the floor and pulls the other one up. She gets both corks in the bottles and tucks them beneath her cloak. “Put the stone back,” she tells me.
I push it across the floor and fit it in place. Before I stand, I pat the stone and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
As we leave the room, the tingling on my skin lessens, but the image of Willow remains in my mind. When we get to the porch the feeling’s nearly gone, but Willow stays, and as we duck into the woods, the tingling evaporates, yet Willow’s still with me. I almost wish she’d go. I feel so guilty. Dawn and I both run. I don’t know why. It’s not like anyone is after us. Perhaps I’m trying to run away from the horrible feeling I have. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I chant in rhythm with my running feet, but it does no good. Willow haunts me.
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