“When did you come up with a Plan C?” I asked.
“Just now,” Josh replied, dropping to a crouch a moment before a crystalline arrow soared over his head. “And I still don’t like Plan B, so no, it’s not okay to go there yet.”
“You’re hard-headed,” I scoffed.
The next arrow pierced the ground at my feet, and I had no doubt it landed exactly where Reed had intended it to. I ran a finger over its shaft, yanking my hand back. “It’s made of ice,” I said in awe.
“Last chance,” Reed snarled. “Release my sister and accompany me to the solstice celebration or, when I’m done here, the next person I visit will be your brother.”
He held out a hand for me to take, a smile playing at the corner of his thin lips. My next breath filled my lungs with the sweet scent of pine and snow, causing my thoughts to swim in my skull. I opened my mouth to reply, but my powers bit back the Okay, just leave Chase alone I’d been ready to say.
Josh stepped in front of me, momentarily blocking my view of Reed and giving me the precious second I needed to realize what agreeing would have cost me. I said a silent thank you that Isaac had gotten Dad and Chase out of the house, then put my hands on Josh’s shoulders and peered around him. “Stop messing with my head!”
Reed pulled another arrow from the quiver on his back but didn’t fire it.
“What’s Plan C?” I whispered to Josh.
He replied out of the side of his mouth. “We teleport the hell out of here and take Miss Sunshine with us.”
“That is not better than my idea,” I hissed.
It would have been, if I knew how to travel by telekinesis or if Josh could carry a living object with him, but as it was, he had only managed to transport himself short distances.
“They’re plotting their escape,” Brea so kindly informed her brother.
Thick columns of ice jutted out of the ground like stalagmites, scattering the shadows, pushing up headstones, and uprooting trees. Josh leaped out of the way as a jagged pillar of ice broke through the grass beneath his feet. A large crack tore through the frozen dirt and traveled outward, swallowing one of our candles as it continued to the base of the large stone angel. The next icicle shot up in front of Brea, knocking the meadowsweet aside and freeing her.
“I warned you,” she said and vanished, leaving Josh and me with a very pissed-off faerie.
Chapter 28
Plan B
Josh held his arms in front of him, wrists crossed. He inhaled deeply, swiftly sweeping his hands downward on the exhale. Rain poured down around us in a sheet so thick it appeared as if we stood inside the eye of a hurricane. I gathered the moisture from the air and conjured a storm cloud over the spot where I’d last seen Reed. Lightning struck, but since I didn’t hear him scream in pain, I guessed it had missed its target.
“I can’t see him,” I said, stating the obvious.
“We need a minute to regroup,” Josh replied as he kept the waterworks flowing. He adjusted his hemp bracelet and whispered, “I love you, Kaylee.” If I didn’t know Josh wasn’t the type to give up, that’s exactly what I’d have thought he was doing.
The temperature dropped again. The torrent froze solid from the ground up for as far as I could see, leaving Josh and me trapped in a smooth tube of ice. The grass became slick. I twisted, looking for any sign of Reed, and slipped. The next thing I knew, I was on my butt looking up at Josh.
“Happy now? We’re his hostages.”
“It’s not over yet.” Josh pulled me to my feet.
I brushed frost off my jeans. “We don’t have any other choice, Josh. You know it.”
Fine spider-like veins raced along the wall of our jail, producing thin cracks all around us. Chunks of ice exploded inward from our left. Josh and I ducked, arms over our heads, as debris pummeled our backs. Reed stepped through the hole created by the explosion, bow in hand, arrow drawn and pointed at Josh.
“No!” I jumped up, my boots slipping on the frozen ground, but I managed to stay on my feet. Reed didn’t even flinch. “Arrow!” I screamed, hand held in front of me, praying that adding the word to my desire would make the spell work.
An instant later, I held the arrow in my right hand. I chucked it to the ground behind me. While Reed reached over his shoulder and grabbed another, Josh threw a bolt of energy at him. I pushed out a surge of power and just managed to knock it away.
“What are you doing?” Josh barked.
“We’re not killers!”
“He’s the one with the arrows!”
“Bow!” I yelled. The bow disappeared from Reed’s hand and reappeared in mine. I looked at Josh. “Using your powers to kill will turn your soul black!”
“Then so be it!” Josh’s eyes narrowed, the sky darkened, and lightning cut a jagged line from the heavens toward Earth. Reed jumped backward just before it struck the ground where he had stood.
I dropped the bow and, with my hands raised in front of me, hit Reed with a burst of air, pushing him a few feet away from us. To Josh, I said, “I won’t let you kill him, Josh. He’s not worth an eternity in hell.”
“And I won’t let you risk a lifetime in Neverland!”
“Yes, you will.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Trust me, please.”
“Only if this fails.” Josh attacked Reed with another bolt of energy. Reed shouted a stream of words in a language I couldn’t understand.
Josh held another bolt. He’d just brought his arm back to launch it when a layer of ice slinked over his shoes and up his legs. Dropping the bolt, he tried to move, but before he could free himself, he became encased in a frozen shell.
Reed appeared next to me, and I quickly moved to the other side of Josh.
Reed leaned around him. “You may not have noticed, but Witch Boy can no longer protect you.”
“Release him!”
“So that he may attempt to kill me again? I think not.”
I ran my fingers over Josh’s ice-covered bicep. It was smooth and extremely cold. “If he doesn’t freeze to death, he’ll suffocate!” When Reed only chuckled, I yelled, “I kept him from killing you!”
“You ended our battle. Nothing more.” He held a hand out. “Come with me.”
The afternoon couldn’t have possibly gotten worse. Reed had managed to free his sister without stepping foot in our circle or near the door back to his realm, Josh looked like an ice sculpture, and I was stuck in the creepy section of the cemetery with the faerie I was supposed to avoid and half-dozen shadows that hadn’t been scared away by the supernatural fight. To add to my list of growing problems, now that I wasn’t battling Reed, it was all I could do to keep from trembling with a mix of want and dread.
Reed waited patiently for my answer.
“You’ve proven your magic is stronger than ours. Now, please, defrost him—” I pointed a quivering finger at Josh, then promptly shoved my hand in my pocket “—before it’s too late.”
“Is that a yes?”
I could barely think with Reed staring at me. His entire presence was mesmerizing. From his otherworldly looks to his intoxicating scent, all I wanted to do was give in.
“My family needs me,” I whispered, which was lame. My answer should have been Get lost.
I tried to warm the air, but Josh remained encased in ice.
Reed dropped his arm to his side. “Tell me this, at what point in your grand scheme to rid your world of me did you decide I was worth protecting?”
“I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to let a friend of mine risk his soul for me.” Yet by sparing Reed, I might have killed Josh, the guy who had been like a big brother to me.
“That right there is your downfall.” Reed paced closer, and I stumbled backward. Seemingly unfazed, he continued, “I will visit everyone you have ever loved, and they will meet the same fate as Witch Boy, starting with your father and brother. Then I will freeze this land, and I will make sure you are there to see it all.”
“Why are you doing this?�
��
He shrugged. “Isaac once threatened to ruin everything I loved. I’m merely doing to him what he failed to do to me.”
“If all you cared about was ruining his life, why pretend to be human? Why take a job with my father? Why not lure me to your realm before I realized what was happening?”
“I donned this appearance—” his body shimmered and transformed to the honey-blond-haired man whom I’d first met on my front porch “—to prove I could be adorable and gentlemanly, something my sister bet I couldn’t pull off, and the job with your father was to demonstrate how well I could blend in and make myself useful.”
“In the middle of ruining everyone’s lives, you’re playing Handyman’s Assistant to win a bet?”
“I do like to prove Rhoswen wrong, and my winning meant she couldn’t interfere in my business here.”
And I thought humans could be petty.
He held out his hand. “We can do this the easy way or, if you prefer, I can pop over to the movie theater and check in on your father and that spunky little brother of yours.” When my mouth fell open, he added, “Yes, I know where they are.”
I gritted my teeth. “Leave them out of this.”
He looked at his outstretched hand and then at me.
My gaze went to Josh. “Fix him first.”
“I can’t, but a kiss of summer will have him back to his old annoying self in seconds. Brea will take care of him as soon as we leave. I’m sure she didn’t go far.”
So am I. My eyes narrowed as I deciphered his words. “Like the flowers? He’s frozen in time, not frozen to death?”
“You spared my life. I spared his.”
“Josh, I promise Brea will fix you,” I said, not really knowing if he could hear me. With a heavy sigh, I placed my trembling fingers in Reed’s palm.
“You needn’t be afraid of me,” he said. With his free hand, he offered me his flask. “Drink.”
I bit my lips and shook my head. He hadn’t won, yet.
“It will make our travels more comfortable,” he warned.
I shook my head again and prayed we would head straight for the door before I changed my mind. He stuffed the flask into his back pocket and picked up his bow without letting go of my hand. “Do not say I didn’t warn you.”
Cold gripped me. A thousand needles stabbed at my veins as I gasped for air. I grabbed my neck with my free hand, choking. Death would have been more merciful than Reed’s magic. He stepped closer and snaked an arm around my waist.
“Next time, drink the wine,” he said, though his lips didn’t move.
There wasn’t going to be a next time if I had anything to say about it. But at the moment, I couldn’t say anything—I would have sworn Old Man Winter himself had reached down my throat and yanked my small intestine through my mouth. The cemetery vanished, and the next thing I knew we were standing in my kitchen.
I ran to the sink and threw up.
“We could have driven,” I said hoarsely, then vomited again.
“And give you time to call your boyfriend? No, thanks.”
While I rinsed my mouth out with water, Reed checked the house.
“We’re alone,” he said on returning.
I could have told him that. Dad and Chase were grabbing dinner after the movie, and Isaac and Kaylee were hanging out at her house waiting for Josh’s call, which wouldn’t come now that he was a human ice cube.
The pinecone centerpiece sat in the middle of the table, where it had been for days. The additional meadowsweet Kaylee had added while Josh and I were at the cemetery comingled a little too nicely with Reed’s woodsy scent. The aroma added lightheadedness to my nausea.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I grabbed a pen and paper off the counter. “I don’t want my dad worrying about me.” I nervously rubbed my hemp bracelet against my wrist. “And Isaac and Kaylee, they deserve to know where I am.”
“You have one minute.”
I took a seat at the table and blew out a breath, sending my dark bangs flying. I wrote Dad at the top of the notepad. Reed turned toward the window and drew an imaginary arch through the air. The space between him and the wall shimmered, creating a four-by-two-foot oval void.
The door.
It was what I’d been waiting for. I grabbed the meadowsweet from the centerpiece, muttered the words Josh had taught me, and threw it at Reed’s feet like one throws dice across a table. With a little help from my powers, the sprigs settled on the floor around Reed and the door. One last push of power aligned them in a circle.
Or more precisely, a faerie ring.
“Gotcha,” I said.
Reed’s eyes turned as dark as a blizzard. He banged soundlessly on the invisible wall of his prison.
“Isaac warned Josh that he wouldn’t be able to win in a battle of his magic against yours.” I twirled the pen between my fingers as I spoke. “But Isaac couldn’t help summon Brea to use her as leverage because of that promise he’d made you. So after our last attempt to trick you, I knew we had to get you to let your guard down.”
Reed’s handsome features twisted in fury.
“No more games,” I said. “You walk through the door and lead whatever life you want in your realm. Stay here and you’ll eventually starve, because I’m not letting you out of that ring.”
The front door opened. I peered down the hallway.
“Are we good?” I asked Kaylee.
She glanced over her shoulder at Brea and Isaac and said, “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Rhoswen?” Reed asked. “How could you side with these humans?”
“I did no such thing, Dellis.” She boosted herself up on the counter. “This one”—she indicated to Kaylee with a bob of her head—“summoned me shortly after you freed me.”
“Part of Plan A,” I explained. “If you managed to rescue Brea, then Kaylee would detain her elsewhere.” Josh had called Kaylee through our bond. His message, “I love you,” was code for “Summer faerie on the loose.”
“Rhoswen, free me!”
Isaac and Josh positioned themselves in between her and Reed.
She looked past them. “Dellis, some battles are best not fought. This is one of them. If you were thinking straight, you would agree with me.”
Reed’s glare fell on Isaac, who raised his hands in front of him and said, “I was very hospitable, even insisted the faerie ring be made around a cozy chair. I didn’t harm or threaten her in any way.”
“Reed was just saying goodbye,” I said.
A guttural growl escaped his lips. With one last look at the meadowsweet on the floor, he said, “We will meet again.”
I met his ice-cold glare. “If that’s true, then I hope it’s as friends and not enemies.”
“Brea, are you coming?” he asked.
“In a moment.” She hopped off the counter and faced me. “Isaac said it was you who had insisted on finding a way to, how did he phrase it?” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Oh yes, ‘shove Reed’s ass back through the door without killing him.’”
I twitched a shoulder. “I consider you a friend. I didn’t think you’d feel the same if we slaughtered your brother. Besides, the last thing we wanted to do was ignite a war between our people.”
Brea smiled at her brother. “Will you not admit now that she is different from the other?”
Reed punched the barrier, turned, and stormed through the door. For a fraction of a second, I could see tall trees capped in snow and a violet-blue sky. Then the shimmering, out-of-focus doorway returned.
Brea sighed. “He’ll probably spend the winter stewing over losing this fight.”
Kaylee looked around the kitchen. “Where’s Josh?”
“About him…” I scrunched my nose. “Brea, I know you don’t owe me, but Reed did that trick of his with the ice, and it takes a kiss of summer…I’d be in your debt if you would, you know, defrost him.”
“Defrost?” Kaylee choked on the word.
Brea shook her head. �
�I warned him about upsetting my brother.”
“You did, and I’m sorry for earlier.”
Her hands went to her hips. “He owes me an apology too.”
“Well, if you were to pop over to the cemetery, I’m sure he’d agree.”
“I think I will.” She disappeared.
“He froze Josh?” Kaylee asked, horrified.
I put an arm around her shoulder. “Like a Popsicle, but it’s temporary. He’ll be good as new as soon as Brea gets there.”
Isaac gave me a hug, lifting me off my feet and twirling me around. “You did it!”
“I did,” I replied with a smile, letting him hold me. “And I needed this.”
Chapter 29
Payment Due
Brea went home shortly after she and Josh returned. Isaac and I sealed the door before we cleaned up the meadowsweet. And, as he said he would, Caden stopped by exactly twelve hours from the last time I’d seen him. He only came into the house as far as the foyer.
“You haven’t undone the damage from eating their food,” he said with a frown.
His hand held my chin as he examined my eyes. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see Isaac’s fingers clenched in fists as he pretended it didn’t bother him that Caden stood so close to me. He couldn’t hide the hint of steel that was his jealousy, though.
“I feel better now that Reed’s gone,” I said. “And the longer he’s away, the stronger I’ll get.”
Caden released my chin. “It’s a temporary fix, until he returns.”
“He won’t,” I insisted. “We closed the door, and Isaac’s going to lock the Fae book away someplace safe.”
“Very well.” Caden opened the front door.
I grabbed his arm, ignoring Isaac, whose mouth had fallen open. “I thought you were going to collect on the debt I owe. Wasn’t that the point of the deadline?”
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