by A. R. Kahler
It’s easier to think of something else, something other than what happened and why I was brought back. Why was I brought back? What further use am I to Mab when she is dead and I have no powers? It’s not as if I’m in a position to take back her kingdom. I could barely wrestle a toddler right now.
“What happened to the kingdom?” I ask.
“It has fallen. As I said. The Pale Queen took control.”
“Call her by her name. Penelope.”
His eyes widen.
“Penelope? But how?”
“Wait. How do you know her?”
“There were stories. I was still in the Summer Kingdom at the time. She was working for Mab, but she made a deal with Oberos, Oberon’s son.”
I want to mention how narcissistic it is that Oberon named his son the same thing as himself, save for a letter, but Pan continues before I can.
“I don’t know the specifics. Only that their bargain allowed Oberos to attack and try to bring down the show. It failed, of course, and Penelope was killed in the act. How could this be her?”
“Penelope said she was contracted to live forever,” I say. “Before she killed . . .” But I surprise myself by not being able to finish the sentence. I can’t bring myself to say Mab. Saying it aloud makes it real. And I don’t want it to be real. I want this all to be a horrible dream. Dreams, I can wake up from. This is a hell where not even death can release me.
I want to say it makes me feel invincible. Instead, I feel trapped.
I sigh, looking at the streak of lights across the floor. A police siren pierces the night outside, growing louder before fading into the distance. They don’t stop outside, even though this is one hell of an emergency.
“What do we do, Pan?”
He doesn’t answer. I don’t expect him to. I’m the one who should be making the decisions. Do we just wait here, eating takeout and watching shitty television until Penelope opens the divide?
“She’s taken over Faerie,” I say, hoping that speaking out loud will get the gears turning, will help me find the urge to fight again. “But she’s not planning on stopping there. She’s going to take over the mortal world next, and then keep expanding.” I pause, rap a knuckle on the floor, and look around. Things click.
Shadowed furniture. Sparse, mod, tastefully sterile.
Damn it.
“Where are we?” I ask slowly.
Again, he doesn’t answer right away.
“You didn’t,” I mutter. I can tell through the dim light that he is looking away. Of all the low blows . . . “Really? Roxie’s?”
Because now that the thought has crossed my mind, it all comes crashing back with a haunting familiarity. I hadn’t spent much time here, but I still have the place mapped out in my head.
“It was the only place I could think to bring you on such short notice,” he says. “Nowhere is safe in Faerie, and if someone caught you, if the Pale—if Penelope knew you lived . . .”
“But what about the circus?”
He shakes his head. “The circus will not stand much longer. Her forces were diverted to take down Winter. But once the world has been fully looted and the fires die down, she’ll turn her gaze back to the circus. If it truly is the Penelope I know, the circus is the next place she will want to raze. If only to finally do what she had hoped to accomplish over twenty years ago.”
“She already tried.”
“But that was when Mab was alive,” he says. He looks as if he wants to cross himself or something. “Without Melody and Mab, the circus is entirely vulnerable.”
I don’t want to think of Melody. More people I’ve lost to this game.
“But Roxie’s? You of all people should know—”
“You had drawn a portal here,” he interrupts, gesturing to a wall. “And you enchanted the place yourself. Only you and I can get in or out.”
“You’re forgetting that those defenses fell apart when Roxie sabotaged them.”
He shrugs. “No one is looking for you, Claire. You are dead. We are here because it is enchanted—no one would come in by mistake. It’s as safe as you can be in the mortal world.”
He has a point, but after everything I’ve been through in the last few days—killing my mother, losing and regaining several body parts, watching the Faerie Queen who raised me die right in front of me, fucking dying myself—being here now is just one bitter memory-shaped stiletto in the eye too many. Maybe it’s the stress. Maybe it’s losing too many people too quickly. Myself included. But I snap.
“What about my goddamn safe houses?” I ask. “Your stony little brain too cracked to think of those?”
He turns, and in the half-light I see a deep, jagged seam running the length of his curly-haired skull. Oh. His brain actually is cracked. Probably in battle defending Mab or saving me. Shit. I hope statues aren’t sensitive about things like that. He’s going to have a hell of a time keeping birds from shitting in there.
“I have saved your life, and all you can do is bitch about where I brought you to recover?” There is actual pain in his eyes, one of which is chipped. Pain, and not a small amount of anger. “You are free to go wherever you like, Claire—I won’t hold you back.”
I take a deep breath, count down. I need all the allies I can get. Pushing Pan away would be a horrible move.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “It’s just . . . memories.”
This was the last place I visited before I learned Roxie had been working against me. Playing me. The last place I’d been before releasing Penelope from her astral bonds and starting this snowballing shit-show. The last place my life had seemed—for a moment, for whatever it’s worth—normal.
I glance at a wall, where streaks of light illuminate the runes and wards Eli had helped me create. His elegant penmanship flows across the wall in orange chalk. Eli . . . What had he mouthed when he saw me? I’m yours?
We had fused a contract that stretched past any physical page, and yet the Pale Queen had him in her clutches.
I force myself to standing, using Pan and the sofa as stabilizers. The room sways back and forth, lights flashing across my vision—some from outside, some from my gelatinous brain. I need to be moving. To formulate a plan. To feel like I’m doing something. I need to form an army.
Otherwise I’m just going to sit here and relive Mab’s death. That’s something I’ll save for the many nightmares I’m sure to suffer.
“What are you going to do?” Pan asks.
“I’m going to figure out how to end Penelope.” The words actually surprise me. Not that I said them aloud, but that I truly mean them.
It’s the first mission I’ve done without Mab guiding my hand. But I will avenge her. I will avenge both of them. Mab and Vivienne. I will make Penelope pay for everything she’s done, and everything she’s trying to do.
“How?” he asks.
“By going to Vermont,” I say. “I hope you’re ready for a road trip.”
Knowing that Penelope is out there, planning on crossing over to this realm, gives every motion a sense of urgency. After grabbing some leftovers from Roxie’s fridge—very stale pizza, very flat soda—I begin sketching the portal straight onto her wall. In permanent marker. Bitch deserves it.
I may not have the magic to use the marks I draw, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what to do. I sketch the door and fill in the coordinates, shapes and numbers flowing from my fingers by rote. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve truly felt like myself. I even kid myself into thinking I can feel the power build with every marker stroke. It’s just the vibration of the nib against the wall, but still. It feels familiar. It feels right.
Pan still has to step up and do the honors. I move to the side and let him place a nubby hand to the sigils. He pauses and looks at me strangely right before stepping through the wall. I sigh and follow suit. Even after he saved me, having to rely on a statue for magic is horribly humbling.
For a moment, when I step through, I think I’ve done s
omething wrong.
Snow whips sideways, and above, the sky crackles with lightning as consistent as a pulse. Everything is white and light and shadow, wails and howls, and even Pan is lost to the storm. Did I accidentally portal back to some tempestuous part of Winter?
Then a bolt of lightning strikes nearer, illuminating my surroundings, and I realize—yes, this is the right place. It’s just not the right weather. The urgency in my veins turns to dread. The mortal world is already changing fast. Too fast.
The derelict cotton mill pierces the snow around me, skeletal fingers pushing up through the white and doing nothing to slow the screaming wind. I bundle my coat closer and look at the wall from whence I came; the symbols I’d carved on it are obscured or worn away. I could be stuck here.
Nope. Not going to worry about that.
One of the shadows shifts, and Pan steps toward me.
“What are we doing here?” he yells. I still barely hear it.
I say nothing. He wouldn’t hear it anyway. But as I walk forward, making my way through the stinging snow, I curse myself. I came here because of the ley lines, because I need Eli as powerful as I can make him, but without magic or the ability to use my old kick-the-can method, I’m searching blind.
Which, I guess, really sums up the last week of my career.
Thankfully, I’ve been here a few dozen times to summon him, and when I reach a place that looks vaguely familiar, I figure that’s close enough.
In the back of my mind, there’s a small voice whispering incessantly. Mainly that this won’t work, but also that if I really wanted a powerful Eli, I could have gone to the theatre where Roxie had summoned Penelope. But even if the place is still standing, that’s not a memory lane I want to walk down for anything. Now or ever.
Demons usually require fairly elaborate rituals to summon them, thank the gods. Otherwise any mortal with a bone to pick and a bit of imagination would have one at their back. And would probably be killed by said backstabbing demon before they got any good out of it. There are rituals performed during proper celestial cycles. And sometimes archaic words. Symbols most people haven’t seen, and others most people can’t—lest their eyes burn out or their brains explode. And there is a sacrifice. Always a sacrifice.
Thankfully, there’s also a shorthand for people like me. People who’ve already danced with the dark side.
I pull a dagger from my jacket and make a slash across my wrist. Normally, I’d do palm, but I need to do this fast. And yes, I cut across, not along. I’m making a pact, not an exit. Not yet.
Once the blood is flowing, I begin walking a slow circle, letting my life drip and hiss into the snow.
Even though I crouch, the craftsmanship is shoddy. Blood keeps getting caught by the wind, splattering droplets all over the snow. The line is broken. And it’s not even close to being a perfect circle. Mab would be beyond disappointed. But Mab is dead, and this will do.
With every drop that spills to the ground, I visualize Eli—the words I’ve used to summon him, the true name that binds him to me. The words of our pact. To serve me, and only me. Without question. When the circle is finished, I’m shaking, and it’s not from the cold or blood loss. It’s from power. The slow buildup with every spilled drop, every sacrifice filling me with a primal magic, one that every human has. The power to make a deal. The power to give it all away, for the promise of getting something more. We have the ability to bleed for what we want, and that sort of dedication is like ambrosia to creatures on the astral planes.
Right now, I’m bleeding for something I want a whole fucking lot.
I step outside the circle—what’s left of it at least, as part has blown away in the snowstorm—and raise my dripping hand. I can’t feel my fingers anymore, but that’s okay. That’s just part of the trick. I flex my fingers, watch more blood drip to the ground, just within the edge of the shitty circle, and bring the dagger to my chest with my other hand.
There’s a reason I don’t do the shorthand for summoning Eli. This time, it requires the greatest sacrifice of all.
But hey. Turns out I have more than one life to give.
“This better be worth it, Eli,” I mutter.
Before I can wonder at how much it will hurt, I pierce the dagger through my breast, clean into my right lung.
Oh, it hurts. It hurts a hell of lot. Pain bloom in my chest like a carnivorous lotus as blood spurts into my lungs. It’s not just pain, though. Power ricochets through my body, piercing out through my open palm and into the circle. Fire blooms in the center, billowing up into the sky as I drop to my knees. Even as my life fades, relief floods me. It worked. It fucking worked. At least, this part did.
Obviously, I’d never tried before.
I fall to my knees, the dagger still lodged in my chest. Pan is at my side in a moment, holding me up, keeping me from eating snow. He’s muttering something about throwing my life away, but I’m not focused on him. I’m watching the flames. Waiting. A tear forms in the corner of my eye, and I don’t know if it’s from pain or the need. The need for this—for something—to go my way. Because yes, I opened the portal and sent out the call. But I need Eli to answer. Something he may not be able to do if under Penelope’s command.
The flames whirl for what feels like minutes. Hours. The heat is lost to me as my skin shivers and drips cold sweat. Every second passed is another pulse of blood into my lungs. I cough red. I inhale wet iron. Soon, even the strong embrace of Pan melts away and my body collapses against him.
Eli still isn’t showing.
What if he can’t?
My vision swims. I want to close my eyes. Want to sleep it off. Pan pats the side of my face, tells me to stay with him. What does it matter? I can’t die. So why does it feel like I’m dying?
My eyes flutter shut.
Cold wraps over me, along with the darkness.
And then I hear a voice. Right before someone yanks the blade from my chest, right before my lungs fill with fire.
“Took you long enough.”
Fourteen
The next time I’m conscious, I’m back in a warm room, in a warm bed, and for a moment I think holy shit, it really was all a dream because the place smells like wood smoke and the faint peat of whiskey. Nothing hurts. Then I open my eyes and curl over, see Eli sitting in a chair by the fireplace, and realize I’m not home after all. I have no idea where I am.
“Lewis,” Eli says.
“Who?”
“Where.”
I close my eyes.
“What?”
“No. Lewis is the where,” he explains. “Isle of Lewis. Outer Hebrides. Scotland.”
I quirk an eye open. “Why here?”
“Why not? The world is ending. Might as well be at the end of the world.” He raises a tumbler. “Plus, I figured you could use a proper drink.”
Despite the fact that, yes, I could really use a drink, I don’t get out of bed. I may not be in pain, but moving still feels like something beyond my abilities. That may just be the coziness of the bed, however.
“Where’s Pan?” I ask.
“In the garden enjoying the beautiful weather.” He points to the window and the pouring rain, the droplets just visible in an orange streetlamp. “We didn’t think it prudent to have a statue wandering through the place. Everyone’s a little tipsy, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t notice.”
“You left me,” I say.
I feel ridiculous the moment the words leave my mouth. What am I, some lovelorn idiot? But even that self-ridicule doesn’t take away the truth of the words or the pout in my tone. I really have fallen far. I’m pouting to a demon.
“Technically, I was stolen away,” he replies. He takes a drink. I know he doesn’t feel the effects, but maybe he likes the taste. Or maybe he’s just trying to lead by example. “And waiting for you to come rescue me. I was the damsel in distress in this story. You need to learn your lines.”
“You shouldn’t have been able to leave me,” I say.
“You remember our contract.”
“Seared into my very bones,” he interjects. Before I can ask if that’s a figure of speech, he pulls back a sleeve. No, more than a sleeve; he peels back his flesh and muscle, revealing white bone covered with symbols. Then he drops the sleeve and gives his arm a shake. “Literally. It hurts every time.”
I ignore the queasiness in my stomach at his little show. “And yet you served her.”
“I had no choice. If it makes you feel any better, every second was misery. You forge a pretty mean contract.”
“So why didn’t you come back? You could have been there, when Winter fell. When she . . . tried . . . to kill me.”
“I heard you were thrown off the tallest tower. Impressive. You look great for a splatter.”
“Don’t change the subject. Where were you? How did you break our contract?”
“I didn’t. Not really. I was by the Pale Queen’s side, yes. But I never served her, though it would have been much easier for me if I had.” He downs the rest of his whiskey and pours himself another glass. “You ask why I wasn’t there to save your ass when Mab was killed? It’s because the Pale Queen is made of stronger magic than you and me combined. Your contract with me may be etched into my bones, but that doesn’t mean she can’t collar me. And it doesn’t mean I’m not choking when my body spends every moment trying to get away.”
“So how did you get here? How did the portal work?”
He shrugs.
“Honestly? I don’t know—it really shouldn’t have. Probably something about self-sacrifice. I could wax poetic about it being a power that the Pale Queen doesn’t understand and how it trumps hatred, but I don’t want to be that heavy-handed. I also don’t enjoy being wrong.”
“How do I know she won’t take you back?”
He shrugs again.
“We don’t. But right now, I’m all yours.” He winks. “In whatever way you want to interpret that. Better act fast.”
“That’s not good enough,” I reply. “What if she summons you and tries to use you against me? It would be safest to just send you back now. Before you’re a risk.”