FATE

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  I'm going through some rite of passage in the fairy realm tonight, I thought back to her.

  Bailey has a new crush, Zo continued.

  I gave her a horrified look. As bad as talking about the Sidhe would be, talking about a potential crush would be a million times worse! My mom loved getting the lowdown on my love life (or lack thereof) a little too much.

  “Interesting?” I repeated my mom's word choice. “Nope.”

  Zo paused just long enough to make me nervous. “Not a thing.”

  Fifteen minutes, several probing questions, and a half-dozen cookies (two for me, four for Zo) later, the two of us escaped to my room.

  “What have I told you about thinking about anything that falls under the heading of romance in my mom's presence?” I said once the door was shut behind us.

  Zo rolled her eyes. “Bailey, your mom isn't that perceptive. You're just really bad at bluffing.”

  “And which one of us has a secret identity?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “The same one of us that could use her mind-control powers to make her mother do whatever she wanted.”

  Clearly, Zo had lost her mind. I couldn't mind meld my mom. It wouldn't work. She'd know, or somebody would smite me for even thinking of doing such a thing. This was my mom we were talking about.

  “Let's research,” I said, letting my mental shields down just enough to let some of my power leak over onto Zo.

  “Cool,” she said. “Research!”

  I smirked, and she threw a pillow at me.

  “Darn you, Bay!”

  “I thought you wanted me to use mind control,” I said, the picture of innocence.

  “Not on me!” She threw another pillow. “Brat.”

  I sent her a mental image of me sticking my tongue out. Brat.

  Zo took a defiant bite of the cookie she'd brought upstairs with her, and then we both snorted.

  “Soooooo,” I said, drawing the word out. “Google?”

  In the time it took me to actually navigate my way to Google (because, of course, I had to check my email first, and then a couple of my favorite websites, and then my email again), Annabelle probably could have skimmed eight encyclopedia entries on Greek mythology, four on Celtic traditions, and two on the historical role of jewelry in ritualistic mysticism. Unfortunately, I didn't exactly have A-belle's skills, which was why I had options for college and Annabelle had Options with a capital O.

  “Bailey,” Zo said, and the one word carried an entire sentence with it, one that simultaneously warned me about moping, told me to concentrate on the task at hand, and suggested that I would need to supply her with more cookies soon.

  “Right,” I said. “Research. This is me paying attention.”

  This was me having no idea what exactly I should research. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Three or four times, I moved to type a word, only to jerk my hands away from the keys at the last second. Did I really want to see what the internet could tell me about Morgan? It would be easy to run a search for some of her older aliases, but at the same time, I wasn't sure how much learning about Poseidon or Neptune would tell me about the real Morgan.

  Mythology never got things quite right. The Sidhe weren't who the Celts thought they were, the Fates weren't who the Greeks thought they were, and Morgan wasn't Poseidon or Neptune, even though she had once answered to those names.

  “Bay. Lee.”

  Zo broke my name down into two words this time, which basically meant everything that she'd communicated before, but with more urgency on the cookie front. She was getting antsy, and I knew from vast amounts of experience that an antsy Zo was not a good thing.

  “Why don't you go get us some more cookies,” I suggested. “And I'll get started up here.”

  “Likely story,” Zo said, tweaking my ponytail with one hand. I couldn't help but note that her skepticism didn't stop her from taking my advice and heading back down to the kitchen for round two of Cookie Day.

  Once Zo left the room, I tried to make good on my end of the deal, but I honestly didn't know where to start. I stared at the screen until my eyes started burning, but I refused to blink, hoping that something— other than the constant niggling reminder in the back of my mind that sooner or later, I'd have to learn to do all of this on my own—would come to me. Slowly, painstakingly, my fingers typed a single word.

  R-e-c-k-o-n-i-n-g.

  I hit enter, knowing as I did that there probably wasn't a website that explained an ancient Sidhe ceremony that took place in the world beyond the Nexus.

  The first thing that popped up in the search results was some movie I'd never heard of about a crime-solving priest. Then there were a couple of e-zines, a page about zombies, and finally, a simple definition. I clicked on that last one, and words soon filled my screen.

  Reckoning: noun.

  Counting or computing a specific sum.

  An itemized bill.

  A settlement of accounts, as in “a day of reckoning.”

  “Okay,” I said, as I processed this information and came to three very important conclusions: first, that there was a distinct chance that I'd be spending my first night in the world beyond doing the equivalent of Other worldly math homework; second, that the phrase “a day of reckoning” was distinctly creepy and made me think of cheery things like the end of the world and Judgment Day; and third, that there was a distinct chance that watching the movie with the crazy priest might have been more helpful than what I was doing now.

  Since I didn't have a copy of the movie, I settled for moving on and trying again, this time with a different word, one that I didn't really expect to tell me anything more than Reckoning had.

  N-e-x-u-s.

  It was Annabelle's word. I'd spent months referring to the place I went each night to weave as “the place I go each night to weave,” but Annabelle had started calling it the Nexus, and the name stuck. I probably could have just asked her where she got the word and what exactly it meant, but for some reason, I wanted to see for myself.

  Nexus: noun.

  The connection between items in a series.

  A little more digging told me that it came from a Latin word meaning “to bind,” and with that single piece of information, I found myself flashing back to the first time I'd gone there, and the second, and the third. Everything I knew about that place and Sidhe history hurried busily to the forefront of my mind, each detail elbowing the others for room in my thoughts.

  Once upon a time, the two worlds—the one the Sidhe lived in and the human world—were just barely offset from each other in metaphysical space. Over time, the barrier between the two became harder and harder to cross, and the more complete the separation between the worlds became, the more the Sidhe began to fade away, their power weakened by their distance from our world.

  I tried to remember how the rest of the story went. I'd only heard it once, back when I'd first found out that the entities we were dealing with during our tattoo crusade were actually the mythological Fates. The specifics were a little fuzzy in my mind, but some details—like the fact that the barrier between the worlds had become harder to cross—were as solid and firm as they would have been if someone had spoken them to me just a moment before.

  “As their connection to the human world weakened, so did their powers,” I murmured, trying to remember if that was the exact phrasing the woman who'd told me this particular tale had used. “So they did something to make sure that they'd never lose that connection completely.” I paused and gave up on repeating the story word for word, settling for my own version of what had happened. “They built the Nexus— the realm in between two realms—and they sent three small Sidhe children there, to watch humans live and to become permanently connected to those lives in the most intimate way possible.”

  That was how Adea, Alecca, and Valgius had become the Fates. That was why, when I went to the Nexus each night, the Sidhe in me connected with the human souls in this world. Because in the Nexus, Adea, Valg
ius, and I were the connection between this world and the world of the Sidhe. The power inherent in human lives ran through us, and that made the rest of the Sidhe more powerful too.

  Hadn't Adea said something about connections? Or maybe she'd called them ties. I couldn't really remember.

  I cursed my memory, but part of me had to admit that maybe it wasn't so much a matter of not being able to remember as it was a matter of not paying that much attention the first time. Adea had used her “let's talk about the future” voice, and then she'd gotten all cryptic and I'd zoned out. It was a perfectly natural response—one that had gotten me through many college talks with my mom (not to mention my meeting with Mr. McMann earlier today), but unfortunately, I was beginning to suspect that in this case, this particular method wasn't exactly what you'd call helpful.

  “I'm back, and I come bearing cookie.”

  I glanced toward Zo, still caught up in my thoughts. “Cookie?” I asked on autopilot. “As in singular? Don't you usually come bearing cookies?”

  Zo shrugged. “There might have been a few casualties on the way up the stairs.”

  Translation: She'd eaten them.

  “You come up with anything good while I was gone?” she asked, handing me a cookie, which I set gingerly aside, because some of us didn't have stomachs the size of Montana and metabolisms that made warp speed look slow.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I was thinking about the story that Keiri told us.”

  “Keiri? As in Daughters of Adea, Sidhe-worshipping, told-us-about-the-Fates Keiri?”

  I nodded. “That would be the one. She said that Adea and Val were the connection between humans and Sidhe.”

  Zo nodded.

  “Nexus means connection,” I continued, realizing even as I said it that I wasn't properly communicating the depth of my thoughts. Luckily, with Zo, it didn't matter, because she could read me as well as Annabelle read Latin.

  “If Adea and Val connect the two worlds,” she said, “that means you do too. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “And this whole Reckoning thing is supposed to be you going to … what do they call the other world again?”

  What did people call the Sidhe world? I'm sure Annabelle could have given us an alphabetized list of mythologically correct names, and I was pretty sure that Adea and Valgius had referred to it simply as “the place beyond,” but I settled for something a little more self-explanatory.

  “I don't know,” I said slowly. “I guess people call the other world … ummm … the Otherworld.”

  “Clever,” Zo opined.

  I grinned at her. “I thought so.” After all, the other Sidhe lived there, and it was a world other than the one I spent most of my time in.

  “What do you think it will be like?” Zo asked, her head tilted to the side and her voice softer than usual.

  “I don't know,” I said. “The Nexus is pretty.”

  The words sounded moronic to my ears, but Zo just nodded. “I think I remember that,” she said. “I was kind of concentrating on the evil fairy trying to kill us at the time, but I remember things being very …” She trailed off.

  Now it was my time to nod. “Yeah.”

  The Nexus was hard to describe. Something about it defied description.

  “Are you scared?” Zo's words caught me off guard. Our therapy session in the car aside, Zo wasn't exactly known for her sensitivity. She was more of a hit-now-ask-questions-later kind of girl.

  “A little,” I said. “Adea and Valgius tried to make it seem normal, like of course I'm going there and I'm going to meet others just like me, but at the same time, something about the things they said made it sound like there was more to it than that.” I paused, because up until then, I'd concentrated on what Adea and Valgius had told me, rather than the way they'd told me.

  For a long time, Zo and I sat there, both of us quiet. I wasn't sure what she was thinking, and I didn't probe her mind to find out. Instead, I thought about what had been said in the Nexus and what had gone unsaid and about the fact that Morgan had definitely done some saying and unsaying of her own.

  “I'd go with you if I could,” Zo said finally. Her words were sweet, but her tone was more disgruntled than anything else. She didn't like the idea of not being able to protect me from whatever the Reckoning entailed.

  Come to think of it, I wasn't so fond of that idea myself.

  “I'd take you with me if I could,” I said, and I refused to say the rest of the sentence—but I can't— because it felt like admitting something awful that was true in more ways than one.

  It was official: the world was conspiring to make me see everything as a metaphor for the end of high school.

  “So what now?” I asked Zo, half-expecting her to have answers that had nothing to do with the next half hour and everything to do with the next few years.

  “The way I see it, we have three options.” Zo was clearly in the mood to take charge, and I (a) knew better than to stand in the way of any of Zo's moods, and (b) didn't, in general, have any objection to following.

  “Option one: We try to research the necklaces.” Zo made a face. Clearly, she realized that of the four of us, she and I were the least apt to do any kind of research on mystical jewelry. A-belle was research girl, and Delia was the fashion expert; the two of them would be all over this soon enough.

  “Option two: We forget about the research and go for a trial-and-error kind of thing for using them.”

  I considered that one for a moment, thinking about what the necklace had shown me earlier and wondering what I'd see if I probed things more.

  “What's option three?” I asked, hating that I couldn't just jump on option two, which was quite obviously the best choice.

  Zo picked up the charm on her necklace and held it out and away from her neck, assuming a fighting stance as she did. “I challenge you to a duel!” she said.

  I held out my own necklace and grinned back at her. “I accept.”

  The two of us launched ourselves into option three: using our necklaces in a twisted pendant sword fight, careful not to do any actual damage with the sharp edges.

  Productive? Maybe not, but it was exactly what I needed.

  As we circled each other, completely concentrated on the task at hand, I barely noticed that the shadows in the room seemed to move with us—even the ones that should have been standing still.

  On some level, I must have seen the shadows when Zo and I were attempting to duel, but it wasn't until I laid down to sleep that the image—slithering, scattering, shifting—made its way into my conscious mind. The entire scene played against the backdrop of my eyelids, over and over again, the movement of the shadows so subtle that I wondered if it was real or if this was just another example of Things That Happen When Bailey Doesn't Get Enough Actual Shut-eye.

  Given everything I had on my mind, I should have had trouble falling asleep, but I didn't. One second I was lying there thinking about shadows and Zo (and college, which was never far from my mind), and the next, I was out.

  * * *

  The Seal was cool under my back. I lay there for a long moment, my eyes closed, feeling as comfortable as I did in my own bed. More than anything else in the Nexus, the Seal was home.

  “We are connected.”

  Adea's voice broke into my thoughts, and I flashed back to my mom's “Bailey Marie” that morning. Adea wasn't big on middle names. She preferred eerie lectures. At least this time, I knew what she was talking about.

  Sort of.

  “The three of us are part of one whole, and the Seal represents that whole. It was forged out of man, out of Sidhe, that we might connect the two. In a time when the worlds were separating, our birth brought them closer together, that this Seal and the balance it represents might hold the worlds, separate but entwined, the powers from one rejuvenating the other.”

  “Four score and seven years ago …”

  For some reason, my mind decided that it would be productive to imagine Adea de
livering the Gettysburg Address, rather than actually trying to connect her words to my earlier ponderings about the role I played in connecting the worlds.

  “… our fathers brought forth on this continent …”

  Sigh. I was hopeless—either my subconscious didn't want me probing the issue of connectivity, or it had the attention span of a kindergartener.

  “You are very young.” Valgius's voice was deep and held just enough of a hint of disapproval that I wondered if either of them could see past my shields to my wandering thoughts. The first time I'd come to this place, I'd been an open book, but over months—now years—my power had grown, and they'd become less and less able to use theirs on me.

  “I'll be eighteen in a couple of months,” I said. With a little huff that made me sound closer to the mental age of my subconscious, I finally opened my eyes, which I'd resisted doing in an attempt to stay snuggled down on the Seal for as long as possible, safe and sound and waiting for mortal souls to flood my body with knowledge, power, and the desire to weave.

  “Eighteen.” Adea's voice held a great deal of amusement. “Sometimes I forget you live in their years, Bailey.” She paused, and I could sense her debating whether or not to say more. “You might not always.”

  “Then whose years would I live in?”

  Adea and Val remained suspiciously quiet. Like I wasn't hesitant enough about this Reckoning thing already.

  “Come,” Val said finally.

  I looked around me at the Nexus, the place that Zo and I had agreed was “pretty.” I was clearly outdoors, but the space gave the impression of being enclosed. The grass underneath my feet was lush and just barely damp, always touched by a morning dew no matter what time I came here. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  I couldn't begin to imagine what the Otherworld would be like, any more than I could describe the Nexus when I wasn't there. At that second, the Nexus seemed so simple and clear in my mind: the Seal, the grass, the morning sun, and flowers, lots of them, so large and colorful that they seemed to belong more to prehistoric Earth than the world where I spent my days.