by Lynn Wahl
“Jake, do you have any more EMPs?” I mouthed.
He nodded, holding up four fingers.
I pointed at the wolves and spiders.
He pulled one of the devices out of his backpack and flipped the switch. The wolves and spiders slumped to the ground, one of them landing on its head. It looked sort of funny, but after seeing them move, I didn’t laugh.
I turned to Stormy. “I need you to stay here. Stay with the kids. Stay safe,” I said.
The horse looked at me with her dark eyes, and I swear I could see understanding there. I patted her head. I turned to Lavender who sat between the horse’s ears.
“I have to go,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll be back. I wanted to tell you that you fulfilled your promise to me back on the ship, and that I am grateful for your help. You’ve been a good friend.”
Lavender stared at me, a single tear trickling down her tiny face, and then with a sob, flung herself backwards off Stormy’s head and disappeared into the trees.
“Alright, let’s go,” I said, swallowing my own tears.
Jake looked at me in surprise but when I burst up from my crouch and out into the clearing, he was right behind me.
William yelled at us to stop, but I kept going. When he landed in front of us, I slid to a halt.
“William, move. We’ve got to get to him before he brings the Governor back over here.”
When he didn’t move or say anything, I rushed forward, hitting him in the shoulder. “Move!” I shouted. “You can take the Captain when he comes back through the gate.”
He grabbed my shoulder as I rushed past, pulling me into him. His voice and the words in my ear made me shiver.
He released me, nearly flinging me at the door. I hit it with all my strength, thinking it would be latched or locked. It wasn’t. I fell through into emptiness, legs sailing out from under me, and had a split second to think how incredibly stupid my plan was before crashing down onto a familiar, filthy floor. The cold bite of steel at the back of my neck made me grimace.
The Captain’s silky voice crawled over my skin like maggots. “Look what we have here. Just in time.”
Twenty-Six: Paige
I didn’t have long to sit there and think of how stupid my plan was. Jake came barreling through the door as fast as I had. He crashed into the Captain, knocking the sword to the floor, and they both fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. While they wrestled around, I held the gun up, feeling ridiculous, but found the Governor as he began to back away into the shadows.
“Stop,” I said.
He did, hands flying into the air. “Now look here, missy, you just put that thing down. You’ve got no reason to hurt me.”
At the feeling of the slight compulsion, I shuddered. He had the same ability as the Captain. I wasn’t really surprised. I didn’t lower the gun. The compulsion wasn’t very strong here. When Jake cried out next to me, I turned in time to find the Captain’s fist flying at my face.
I ducked and skipped backward, gun up.
“Stop,” I said. “I’ll shoot.”
The Captain looked at the gun, his eyes widening a bit. He lowered his hands. “Well, I see the little kitten has grown some teeth. I believe I left you on my ship, near death. Quite impressive. We would work well together,” he said.
The compulsion in the Captain’s voice was much stronger than the one in the Governor’s. I shivered as it snaked its way through my brain even through the moss shoved in my ears. I took a deep breath, struggling to keep the gun steady.
“I’ll never work with you,” I said. “Go back through the gate, and I won’t kill you.”
“I don’t think you’ll kill me anyway,” he said. He took a step closer, eyes sparkling with mirth and I felt a thrill of anger that he could be joking while I stood there holding a gun on him.
“I will,” I said. “And I won’t feel bad about it either.”
“Paige. Shoot him.” I heard Jake’s voice, full of pain, come up from the floor and felt my finger twitch.
If anyone deserved to die, it was this man. I was sending him back through the gate to his death anyway. What was the difference? My finger tightened further. I nearly tightened it all the way when I felt the familiar cold circle of steel against the back of my head.
“Drop the gun, Princess. Go on, drop it.”
Gregor. I clenched my eyes shut, slowly loosening my fingers on the gun. It was over. I’d lost. The gun slipped, dipping towards the floor.
Suddenly, a purple blur raced out of the blackness where the door stood and hit the man behind me with a sharp little smack.
He screamed, spinning off into the warehouse holding his face. I pulled the gun back up, but the Captain had already disappeared back through the gate.
I heard a scream, strung out and stretched like it’d traveled a hundred miles to reach my ear, and then the door slammed shut and disappeared. Stunned, I turned to look towards the Governor, but he was gone along with Gregor.
I looked at Jake, shocked that it was over. He sat up, clutching his arm. It was broken. Blood trickled from his nose.
“You did great, Jake,” I said. I turned at a soft little weight on my shoulder.
Lavender sat there, a mischievous smile on her face. “You saved my life,” I said.
She nodded and did a little prancing dance on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said.
I’d worry about getting her back to the island tomorrow. For now, I was glad she was here. I leaned down to help Jake to his feet.
“Let’s get you the hospital,” I said.
Jake laughed, wincing and holding his ribs. “Speak for yourself. Your face still looks like rotten mashed potatoes.”
I groaned and resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs.
“Whatever,” I said.
Twenty-Seven: Paige
“Seriously, Dad. It happened just like I said it did. How could I make something like this up?” I sat there in my hospital bed, looking pitiful, but finally clean. My cheekbone was broken, but healing. Jake was in the bed next to me. The police had put us in the same room to make it easier to protect us in case the kidnappers returned. With two broken ribs, a broken arm, and a dislocated shoulder, Jake looked like he’d lived through a war. He’d gotten the dislocated shoulder tackling the Captain through the door, but we left that part of out of our description.
The story we’d settled on while waiting for the taxi we’d managed to call from a convenience store a few miles from the warehouse, was that I’d seen Jake being kidnapped by Gregor and a few other men. I’d followed and been kidnapped as well. We’d been held in the warehouse for the last several days, unsure what was going to happen, but had managed to escape when I’d stabbed Gregor in the eye with a nail.
Lavender had enacted the scene for us as we waited outside the convenience store; she was convinced she’d put out his eye with her shiny little sword. I figured when they found Gregor and the Governor it would give our story some credibility.
No one could figure out why the Governor would be kidnapping kids, but they were leaning towards some sort of illegal drug or slave trade. The news was plastered with new documents seized from the Governor’s estates, including contracts with arms dealers from overseas.
My dad sighed and patted my hand. “I don’t understand why you climbed out of the house to follow someone at three in the morning. Why didn’t you just call the police?”
I shrugged, not wanting to admit I’d had the exact same thought. “You know, I…uh…I thought it was the right thing to do. And I left my cell phone with my prom date.”
My dad snorted and glanced over at Jake. “Well, I guess the kid can’t be that bad. He got beat up helping you escape.”
I rolled my eyes, wincing as it made my cheekbone ache. It took Jake almost being beat to death for my dad to warm up to him. I’d have to remember that in the future.
“Alright. Well, I’m going to head back home. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you
up.”
I nodded, fighting back the tears. My dad had changed since I’d left. From what Jake’s mom had told me, he’d been worried sick. He hadn’t stopped searching the neighborhood and surrounding suburbs for me until the police called and told him they’d found me.
I pulled my dad into a hug and watched as he left. When the door shut behind him, Lavender fluttered down onto my head from where she’d been hiding in the curtains. I was worried about her, but she was having a great time zipping around the city. Once I’d warned her of how much iron there was in the city, and she’d figured out that cloth and plastic were really the only safe things to land on, I stopped worrying about her so much.
Jake looked over at me from the other bed.
“So you and your dad are doing good,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah, he seems to even like you now.”
We were quiet for a few seconds. I rushed to fill the silence. “So, I was uh, thinking…it’s too late for prom, and we’ll be graduating, so there aren’t any dances or anything, but how about a date?”
Jake stared at me, his eyes serious. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. I sighed and closed my eyes. This wasn’t going like I’d planned it at all.
I looked up as Jake finally laughed. “Paige, of course I’ll go with you on a date.”
I felt the blush throbbing in my cheekbone and managed a little laugh. “Thanks, Jake. That’s great.”
I let my eyes close again, smiling as I felt Lavender’s soft weight nestle underneath my hair. I tried to be happy about the idea of dating Jake, but behind my eyelids, the image of William’s grinning, cocky face floated, reminding me of what he’d said before we’d left the island.
The remembered words made me feel strange and fluttery inside.
“You were wrong about yourself,” he’d said. “You are a fighter. And we’re not finished with one another. I won’t forget you.”
Even with Jake in the next bed and a promised date, I hoped that William didn’t forget me. With this thought in my head, I finally fell asleep.
I woke a few hours later, the room dark. My face was throbbing with pain. When I reached for the button to call the nurse for more pain medicine, a warm hand closed over my fingers.
I nearly shrieked, but Lavender was there in front of my face, her finger held to her lips.
“What’s going on?” I asked, turning my face to see who’d touched me.
“Shh,” William said, leaning in to the little bit of light coming in from the window. “I told you we weren’t finished with each other.”
“Why are you here?” I asked. I was confused, never thinking to see William here in my own world.
William’s smile faded. “King Nuada needs your help,” he said. “I’ve come to fetch you back.”
I shook my head, then hissed out a breath at the pain. “No,” I said. “I did my part.”
William looked a little hurt. “You don’t want to come back, even to see me?”
I wasn’t sure of my answer. I had mixed feelings for William that I couldn’t really decipher, but it didn’t really matter because William continued.
“Regardless, you’re coming back with me. We need you to save the island. You don’t have a choice.”
I thought about screaming, or trying to punch William in the face and running away, but I was drugged and in a lot of pain. There wasn’t much I could do. Perhaps I could escape while William dragged me to the warehouse.
“So will you come?” he asked.
I stared at him. “You’re not giving me a choice.”
He smiled. “That’s what I thought,” he said, as if I’d agreed to help him instead of being forced.
He pulled back my blankets and began to tug me out of the bed. Before I could protest, he threw something down on the floor with a thud and tugged me forward.
“Paige?” Jake’s voice came from the other bed. William shot the bed a nasty look and shook his head.
“Go back to bed,” he said. “You’re not invited.”
The last thing I saw of my own world before William pushed me into a black hole in the middle of the hospital room floor was Jake’s startled and angry face.
When I came back to my senses, I was sprawled at the feet of the King of the Fae.
“Welcome back, Healer. I’m glad you agreed to come. We need your help.”