Fae or Fae Knot (Providence Paranormal College Book 10)

by D. R. Perry

  “Well, I bet you want some from me, too. You can have mine if you let Ed go. I’ll get a boatload more than he ever will.”

  “My deal with your friend is set, and I cannot cancel it. Doing so would break a promise I made to another.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I will make one concession for you. If you give me some of your years, I will take fewer of them from young Master Redford.”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  “You know what you must do to close our deal, young Alkonost.”

  “Why did the queen make Dick Hopewell a prince?”

  “So she could wed him and beget an heir with him.”

  “Why does Dick want a baby?”

  “He does not. He’s already got enough power to change life as we know it in the mortal realm, but it's restricted. Not so if he seizes a monarchy, something he will do at his first chance.”

  I couldn’t think of another question to ask. I closed my eyes, trying to decide. What would Mama ask? Nothing. She’d stick a cutlass in the Tsuchigomo and call it a night. What would my dad ask? I had no clue. I opened my eyes and my mouth and let the first words in it come out.

  “Will the good guys win?”

  “I can’t answer that question, but someone here and in my debt can.” The Tsuchigomo snapped his fingers.

  I heard a rustle of fabric, then Cosmo happily clapped his hands. Looking down, I watched an old woman step out of the curtained doorway. She had a head of white curls, except for one lock of black at the right side of her head.

  “Mom! Be careful!” Cosmo got up and helped the woman. He gave her his own seat.

  “Huh.” I’d overheard Miss Olivia and Miss Kim talking about this lady in the summer on Mama’s ship. “Cassandra Spanos. She sees the future.”

  “Yes. And she’ll answer your question as payment for her last debt.”

  “The Extramagus will prevail unless dusk and dawn unite.”

  “I don’t get it.” I twisted the webbing I sat on. “That makes no sense. Sunrise and sunset are opposites. They can’t ever happen at the same time.”

  “All the same, that is the truthful answer you have been given.” The Tsuchigomo waved one hand at me like he was shooing a fly. “Now get out of my webs, young Alkonost. I have other guests to entertain.”

  I opened my mouth, ready to argue with him, offer him a hundred years of my life if he’d only talk like a regular person instead of a fortune cookie. But before I could say that, the door swung in, busted open by Hertha Harcourt’s booted foot. I flew down, ready to protect Cosmo and his mom if I had to.

  “Nobu!” She stopped beneath the Tsuchigomo, glaring up at him. “I need you!”

  Hertha held the egg in her arms, clutching it like Mama gripped the wheel in a rip current. I blinked, noticing the web of cracks all along one side. Something moved in there, something pink and white, but it pushed slowly and with little force.

  “Half a moment.” The Tsuchigomo’s back legs pressed together around a web strand. He came down from the ceiling fast enough to scare me and slow enough that he seemed to float. “Ah, yes. I see. The baby dragon is dying. There’s nothing I can do for your child, Hertha. Not until they hatch.”

  “No!” I rushed forward. The baby couldn’t die, not now, when it didn’t even get a chance to live yet. “It’s not fair.”

  I reached out, fingers stretched toward the egg. Nobody stopped me, or even made a sound. It was like time or everyone else in that room had stopped except for me and the baby who was so not ready to be born that he or she would die.

  But time hadn’t stopped. I heard them all breathing, and felt their eyes on my back, my face, my wings. It was like they expected me to do something about this. Me, an almost six-year-old kid who missed her Mama was supposed to save a life like some kind of hero. Or some kind of mythical creature even more powerful than a dragon.

  I hadn’t learned much about the mystic birds, what the differences were between what Miss Olivia and me were, or about the third feather, either. All I knew was that, even though I didn’t know what I could do, that flutter in my stomach told me I should do more than stand there.

  Reaching out with my hands and my wings, I took the egg out of Hertha’s arms. She let me do it, too; just opened her arms. It seemed like the right thing, and I kept on letting my heart get out in front and lead, like the fastest kid in a race. And what my heart held more of than anything else just then was love.

  Folding my wings around so they blocked everyone else in the room was easy. They shut us in together, me and the egg. Inside the wings shut up in Nobu’s room closed up in the queen’s castle hidden away in her demesne in the middle of the Under. Maybe I was a character in one of those songs about the hole in the bottom of the sea or the old lady who swallowed a fly.

  Or those Russian dolls, the ones Father talked about before he died.

  I blinked. The thought was so tiny and quiet, it could have come from a Gnome’s eyelash. Had the egg talked?

  Yes.

  What’s your name?

  Saya. At least, that’s what Mother and Brother think at me.

  How do you get out of there?

  I need to be stronger.

  I’ll do my best, Saya.

  I tried staring at the egg, then tried hugging it and kissing it. Nothing worked, and Saya’s movements were fewer as time ticked by. All the breath got knocked out of me, like the time I fell off the main mast. After that, air came in like a lion and out with tears. Those fell on the egg, and still nothing happened. I took another breath and let it out with what I thought would be a tantrum-worthy wail. It wasn’t.

  Instead, my voice transformed, rising in sadness. It sounded like shifters changing into their animal forms, different but somehow as right as a sunrise. I didn’t shriek or cry—I sang.

  The words pouring from my mouth came from a memory that didn’t belong to me. It was like putting on Mama’s shoes or wearing Grandpa’s hat. The tune and the words weren’t mine. I’d borrowed them from all the other Alkonosts who’d picked up that feather before me. I kept on singing until the song belonged to me, too, and remembered Saya stuck in the egg that whole time. I sent the song in there with her.

  Under all the singing was something sharp, another sound. It wasn’t a beat, more like maracas or those wooden shells dancers clack together, but it followed along in time with my music. Something strong pressed on my arms, too.

  Saya?

  Almost.

  I answered with my voice, singing louder. My wings opened as though they couldn’t stay folded and hold all the sound in anymore. I raised my head, belting out one last, long note. It ended with one more crack. Bits and pieces of eggshell rattled to the floor. But the baby dragon didn’t move in my arms.

  “Saya?” I looked up at the closest person, who turned out to be Nobu. “She’s breathing, but only a little.”

  “It’s my turn.” The Tsuchigomo held his human arms out. When he tried taking Saya from me, I couldn’t let go. I knew it wasn't right to leave her alone. “Very well. I will save the little one and collect my debt from the Alkonost at the same time.”

  Something as smooth and clean as freshly aired bedsheets but as strong as sailcloth wrapped around Saya and me both. I looked down to see Nobu’s spider legs producing silken threads and binding the two of us. I yawned and shut my eyes, sleepy even though I’d had more than enough rest. The last thing I remembered about Nobu’s room was my breath and my heartbeat echoing and blending with Saya’s until I couldn’t tell them apart.

  Chapter Twelve

  Albert

  I put the letter with my apology on top of the card catalog and asked the helper ghosts to deliver it to Headmistress Thurston. Turning to leave, I nearly collided with Taki Waban. The ancient indigenous ice dragon had, for whatever reason, decided to work as the College librarian.

  “You must go now.” His face wore a wild-eyed and desperate look instead of its usual sleepy grin.

  “I was lea
ving, sir.” I resisted the urge to salute such an ancient and dignified creature.

  "That’s not what I mean." His attention lost focus as though he hearkened to something I couldn't sense. "Dragons, important ones, are in terrible danger, young Knight. Only you can reach them in time.”

  "Uh—” I blinked. "In the Under? But my connections to dragons aren't strong enough." Without a sympathetic connection, it’d take me hours to track them down.

  “They’re with your daughter, Knight.” His eyes fixed on my face, narrowing focus so tightly it could have skewered me.

  “Right.” It didn’t get much more sympathetic than a blood relation.

  I closed my eyes, conjuring an image of Hope behind my eyelids. The corners of my mouth turned up as I imagined her hanging upside-down from a tree branch. Gathering my faerie energy into one hand, I pointed. The sound of Mr. Waban’s footsteps as he got out of the way didn’t distract my focus. I willed myself to my daughter’s side, and there I was, back in the Under.

  The room I stood in wasn’t the nursery. A cocoon of spider silk exactly the right size to contain a child quivered in the middle of the room. With fists clenched and nostrils flared, I prepared to give Nobu hell for what he’d done to my daughter. A frail and slender hand, crisscrossed with blue veins and powdery wrinkles, pressed my right arm.

  “There’s no time for an outburst, Sir Dunstable.” The dry voice sounded familiar from the College.

  I turned my head to peer into the unnaturally wizened face of Cassandra Spanos. She’d traded years of her life to Nobu, and at first, I couldn’t fathom why. Then, I beheld the boy at her side. He could only be the yearling son of the big-cat Mafia boss, artificially aged ten years.

  I understood Cassandra’s bargain at once—a sacrifice for her son’s survival. The boy pointed at the pale-blue and green shards littering the floor beside a pair of poison-green Louboutins. Hertha Harcourt.

  “But if the egg hatched, where—” I caught myself before asking a question. “The whelpling was premature.”

  Hertha just nodded. One hand clutched the beribboned collar of her blouse while the other hugged her waist. She gazed at the cocoon, and I understood that the Tsuchigomo was taking years from two children, not one.

  “Saya is her name, and the Alkonost saved her life.” The boy leaned forward and scooped up some eggshells using a scrap of fabric. He handed them to Hertha, who tucked them in her handbag.

  “So, the baby is a full-blood female dragon.” I peered at the cocoon, imagining what it must be like for my exuberant child to be trapped in with an infant.

  “The first in several centuries.” Nobu the Tsuchigomo untethered the silk strands connecting his body to the cocoon. “And not out of danger yet, according to my Precognitive friend.”

  I shook off Cassandra’s hand, not wanting her Psychic energy interfering with my second portal in mere minutes. My temples ached, and a painful pressure squeezed the back of my head. I knew what, or rather who, was coming.

  "Be prepared to flee." The frail Psychic turned to face the door, squaring her shoulders and forcing me to step a few inches farther into the room.

  Pushing past the pain was the easy part. I opened my mouth to give them instructions, wanting them all to go through, but I couldn’t choke out more than one single syllable.

  “Go.”

  A way back to the Providence Paranormal College Campus opened. With inhuman strength, Hertha hefted the cocoon and bolted out of the Under just as the door from the hallway swung inward, knocking Cassandra to the floor. The boy dropped to his knees, hands outstretched toward his mother.

  "You too, Cosmo.” The young-old Precog waved her hand like a hankie out a train window in a black and white movie. "I love you."

  “But Mom—”

  A chuckle like tearing fabric came from the doorway. I didn’t have to turn to know Richard Hopewell stood in it. My headache was more than enough confirmation, but there was also a blast of heat as hot as the heart of a bonfire—Spectral magic mingled with plain old fire.

  “No!” Nobu held up one hand like a cop at a four-way intersection. “I'm a valuable hostage, and these are my rooms.”

  “I outstrip your usefulness now, old man.” Richard stepped past me like I was part of the furniture. “I’m the prince. If I want to burn everything in here, I will. Starting with them.”

  He pointed one flame-coated and glowing finger at Cassandra and her son. She sat up, using her momentum to push Cosmo toward my portal. With a sob, he went, tears streaming from his eyes in his wake, but they’d moved too late. Richard’s blast was in motion, and it’d catch them.

  I screamed, wishing I could send even half of my headache into Richard’s skull. When the magical flames hit Cassandra, they didn’t roll over and engulf her son right away. Instead, that inferno stopped in its tracks for a count of three. Cosmo Gitano made it through my portal just before it snapped shut.

  I blinked, wetting my cheeks. Cassandra had made the ultimate sacrifice for her son, but it shouldn’t have worked. It truly had been too late. Only Gnomes could hold back time like that. I wracked my brain for any other explanation, gazing at the spot where the Psychic lay burning. Then I realized that time hadn’t stopped. The magic had simply cut off the closer it got to me, like it had hit a wall at the last second.

  “My portal.” I blinked, knowing that I hadn't closed it. Someone from the other side had cut it off. I waved one hand and kept my mouth shut. My enemy didn't need to know that.

  “Yes.” I watched the Extramagus scoop the remaining eggshells into a glass vial. He waved a hand at them until they resembled metal filings, then tucked it in a pocket. “You opened it in the room of the queen's hostage. It proves you’re a traitor to your court and monarch.” Richard reached out with one hand, slapping something heavy around my wrists.

  “I’m your prisoner, then.” I closed my eyes, letting him drag me out the door alongside him.

  “Yes. And I’ll enjoy your execution immensely.” His voice came soft and close, beside my left ear.

  “I haven’t been tried or sentenced yet.” My retort sounded hollow and distant.

  “When I rule, there will be no such nonsense for people like you.”

  I hoped with all my heart that someone—anyone—had overheard that remark. Richard Hopewell was more treacherous than I’d ever considered being.

  Gemma

  “Henny, thank the gods!” Hertha Harcourt leaped from the center of the brilliance, carrying a silvery bundle.

  I shielded my eyes from the bright light that came with the unexpected voice in Henrietta Thurston’s office, trying to see more.

  "We need shadows so they can't see this side!” The headmistress sprang over the desk, tails streaming out behind her to help her stick the landing. "Close the portal as soon as they're through."

  A soothing fog of indigo rolled in to dim things back down to levels resembling normal. One glance in its general direction confirmed that Maddie had cast an Umbral spell, her wand held under Henry Baxter’s arm as he held his hands over his face.

  “On it.” I held out one hand, fighting with the opposing court’s magic as I tried to knock it over. For a moment, I wondered why I had so much trouble, but then I saw who’d opened it. “Al?”

  He didn’t even glance in my direction, and I couldn’t blame him. Richard Hopewell barged into the room Albert Dunstable stood in, his hands lit up with Fire and Spectral magic. Al stood his ground, along with an elderly woman and what looked like a half-spider, half-goblin man. I couldn’t hear a word they said.

  When Hopewell burned the old lady, Maddie screamed. She sent even more of her shadows in front of Henry, her magic taking on the shape of a kite shield, but Richard's flames never made it near the portal, even though a blast that big should have.

  When the half-pint barged through, he ran right into me, but trolls like me are tough, so I didn’t fall. He grabbed me around the waist, his shoulders hitching with sobs.

  A
l took one look over his shoulder and blinked, then waved one hand like an afterthought. As my magic snapped the portal shut, I watched Hopewell clap him in what passed for irons in the Under. I glanced around, trying to find Hope. She was supposed to be with him. The Redford kid, too, but the Klingon on my starboard bow wasn’t the state’s youngest medium.

  “Who are you, and where’s my daughter?” I pried the kid’s hands off me and looked down into his face. I immediately felt like a heartless bitch.

  It was frozen with grief. I wasn’t sure he’d ever stop crying, not on the inside, anyway. The whys and wherefores weren’t important, either, only that this poor child, who looked an awful lot like Tony Gitano once I thought about it, had some serious trauma to deal with in his near future.

  “Miss Tolland.” The simpering voice was a blast from my distant and recent past. “Gemma.”

  “Captain Tolland will do, Mrs. Harcourt.” I turned my gaze on her, narrowing it until she appeared to be at the end of a tunnel. “Where is my daughter?”

  “With mine.” She laid a bundle of what looked like spider-shifter silk on the headmistress’ desk. “In here.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I put one arm around the still-shuddering mystery boy because I didn’t dare risk monarchical wrath descending on Hope’s head by touching that cocoon.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Your, ah, um, ex-paramour got us out in the nick of time.”

  The bundle of silk shook, then pitched from left to right. Had it gotten bigger? Muffled voices came from inside it. The crying boy untangled himself from my side and jumped on the polished mahogany surface, tearing at strands like he was at the world’s saddest birthday party.

  The air cleared, brightening the room as the headmistress used her Air magic to remove smoke that had come through the portal with everyone else. Maddie recalled her shadows, then leaned against Henry. She sniffled, her tear-streaked face making me wonder exactly why she’d screamed.

  “Who was she?” I asked the magus.