Unconsciously, my gaze flitted toward Xane and Eze's girls, as I wondered if all Sidhe would have the same reaction. I found the three of them still in a standoff, the girls silent and Xane pontificating enough for all three of them. On the other side of the fire, the cliquey girls were still whispering and snorting to themselves, content to pretend that I'd never dared to tread on this sacred place or their sacrosanct little social circle.
“You wanna sit?” James asked.
“Where?” I replied, fascinated by how very human he sounded, and by the fact that he seemed to have no interest in the other girls, including not one but two future queens.
James took my hand and led me closer toward the fire. As the warmth jumped off the flames, clamoring for my skin, a deep pool of ice opened up inside of me, sending chills down my bones and allowing the fire to warm them. I shivered, more with pleasure than with cold.
“We're creatures of balance,” James said. “Never too hot, never too cold.” He started to sit down, and I watched as the mountain contorted itself to provide him with a bench of sorts. Hesitating for just a moment too long, I sat down beside him.
“Where you come from, things that aren't hot or cold are lukewarm or cool or neutral,” James continued, paying no heed to the accommodation the mountain had made for us. “Here, we're always hot and cold, in equal parts, and we feel them both in everything we do. Being Sidhe means having that in all things: light and dark, night and day, water and blood.”
I didn't exactly follow on that last one, but his voice sounded like laughter, and I liked it. It wasn't a chuckle or a giggle or a tentative tee-hee. It was indelicate, snorting laughter, and I could have listened to it forever.
“We have forever here,” James said. “And ever and ever and ever and ever …”
I felt vaguely like he was seconds away from breaking into “The Song That Never Ends.”
“Good things never end here,” James said, “and bad things disappear the moment we will them away.” He reached toward me, and when he put his arm around my shoulder, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for my skin to touch his.
“It's nice here,” I said, unaware that the words were planning to exit my mouth. Still, I couldn't stop them. Sitting there, on top of a mountain that bent its will to ours, breathing in clouds that tasted sweeter than cotton candy, listening to a boy who sounded like laughter, I let myself indulge in a moment of pure oneness with everything around me. I closed my eyes, and I could feel Xane and Axia and Lyria, could feel the girls sitting across the fire, and Adea and Valgius, attending the Queen and King. I could sense the rise and fall of the hills, could hear the sun setting, little by little. More than anything, I could feel that scattered throughout the land, there were others like me, others whose ancient blood was interwoven with my own to the extent that I could feel their bodies as extensions of my own.
“It's nice,” I said again.
“It's home,” James said simply. “We've missed you.”
Me? They didn't even know me.
“We've always known you. All Sidhe know all others: we're born with the knowledge of those who came before us and those who will go after. It's obvious when someone is missing, when our world is unwhole.”
It pleased me to think that this place might miss me once I left. That James might have missed me.
As this thought took up residence in my mind, a muscle in my neck twinged, and as I reached up to rub it, my hand brushed against the chain around my neck.
“What's that?” James asked, eyeing my necklace with interest.
I went for a quick subject change and somehow came up with a question to sidetrack him. “How can your world miss me,” I said, “when I was born to live separate from it?”
I wasn't sure where the words came from, but the second they were out of my mouth, they triggered my memory of the story I'd been thinking about earlier that day, about a race whose power was faltering until they set aside three children to know human beings, three children who wove the Fate of the mortal world and were never given the chance to live in their own.
Wasn't that why Alecca had gone all Evil Bitca on the world? Because she and Adea and Valgius had lived separate from the rest of the Otherworld, a living sacrifice for the power that fueled this land, and when Adea and Valgius had fallen into very human love with each other, Alecca, the Fate of Life, had had nothing left except a very human hatred.
“I'm the Third Fate,” I said. “I belong to the Seal, not to this place.”
Darn it! I didn't want the words to be true. I didn't want to be saying them. I didn't want to be remembering these things or asking these questions.
“You belong where you choose, Bailey,” James told me. “This place could be yours, if you'd accept it.” He reached out, and the mountain morphed again to provide a small stone cup, filled with an amber-colored liquid that smelled like maple syrup and daisies and incense all at once. James brought the cup to his lips.
“Nectar of the gods,” he said, and I couldn't tell whether he was joking or not. “You want?” He held the cup out to me, and my thumb throbbed where I'd cut it on the necklace earlier that day.
“No,” I said after a long moment. “No, thank you.” James shrugged. “No big,” he said, lowering the cup to the ground. “So what do you want to know?”
The question took me by surprise.
“You must have questions,” James said, wiggling his eyebrows. “I have answers. Ask away.”
“Okay,” I said finally. “If Adea, Valgius, and I are the Fates, who's everyone else?”
For a moment, I wondered if James would even know what I was talking about. The Sidhe hadn't given themselves these names, hadn't (as far as I knew) fashioned themselves into gods for the ancient Greeks. I wasn't even sure that any of them, aside from Adea and Valgius, knew as much about the mortal realm as I knew about this one—even if James had allegedly crossed over back in the day. For all I knew, James might not even know what I meant by Fate.
“Got any guesses?” James asked. “Come on, start with Eze.” I took his response as an indication that he did know what I was talking about, but that didn't make guessing any easier. My knowledge of Greek mythology was sketchy at best, and given the degree to which myths usually ended up being wrong, I had no idea which portions of what I knew I could count on to be reliable.
“She's the Queen of the Seelie Court,” I said. “The Queen of Light.”
“And that would make her …” James seemed to enjoy seeing me squirm. For someone who wasn't human, he did a darned good impression.
“You tell me.” I wasn't about to risk a guess that might somehow insult Eze, because I got the distinct feeling that her being out of sight meant nothing about whether or not she was out of earshot.
“The Greeks liked to think of her as a man,” James said. “They just couldn't see that much power as female.”
Eze, I thought. Eze.
And then it came to me, from where I had no idea. “Holy freaking cow in a box,” I said. “She's Zeus!”
“Very good,” James said. “And yes, she is.”
I silently thanked him for not commenting on the fact that I'd just used the phrase “holy freaking cow in a box.” The expression on his face told me quite explicitly that part of him had wanted to.
I forced myself to focus. “So if Eze is Zeus, that makes Drogan …”
“Zeus's brother, of course,” James said. “If there was one thing the ancient Greeks did well, it was familial relationships. There were three siblings, who divided the world between them. Zeus ruled over the heavens, also known in this realm as the World of Light. Hades took the underworld …”
“The World of Darkness,” I finished. Drogan as Hades. It was a creepy image. “What about the third sibling?”
James clamped his mouth shut.
“What?” I poked him in the side and blushed the second I realized I'd done it.
“There is no third,” James said. “There are o
nly two. Seelie and Unseelie, King and Queen. So it has always been.”
Brainwashed, I thought, party of one, but I didn't say it out loud.
“And the others?” I asked.
“Xane doesn't make any appearances in that particular mythos himself,” James said, obviously amused by that fact, “but you can think of him as a smaller, younger Hades. Axia was once known as Artemis, Lyria as Aphrodite.”
Somehow, it was hard to picture shy-smiled Lyria as the goddess of love.
“And those two?” I asked, gesturing across the fire. I realized a second too late that the girls were no longer there.
“It's generally considered ill-mannered to point.” The girls appeared on either side of the bench, seemingly out of nowhere. They had pale skin and lips the color of blood. Like James, they were redheads of sorts. The one who had spoken was a true strawberry blonde, her hair both pale and red. The other looked more like a lion, her mane a darker shade of James's red-brown. The two of them were incredibly thin—to the point that I felt easily twice as wide as the two of them together. Their eyes were deep-set, and their piercing blue gazes dug into me like talons.
“Uhhhhh … hi, girls,” James said. I got the feeling that he wasn't so much caught off guard that they were there as he was uncomfortable with their proximity to me.
“Hello, James,” the girls said in unison, and then they began to pet him, running their hands up and down his triceps and occasionally burying their fingers in his hair. If my entire life had been a movie, this moment alone would have been enough to change its rating to PG-13. Heck, I was almost eighteen, and I didn't feel old enough to be watching this.
“Girls,” James said patiently, ignoring the fact that they couldn't keep their hands off of him, “this is Bailey.”
“We—”
“—know.”
They finished each other's sentences, their bloodred lips savoring the words.
“Bailey, this is Kiste.” James gestured to the girl with the darker hair. “And this is Cyna.”
Kis-tee. Ky-nah. The pronunciations hung in the air.
So who are they? I thought, trying to figure out which Greek goddesses would most likely be redheaded vampires.
As soon as the word vampire crossed my mind, I spent several seconds wondering if there was such a thing as a vampire Sidhe, and if Kiste and Cyna were staring at me like that because I was on the lunch menu. With James beside me, I didn't feel scared, but the possibility still creeped me out.
“We're—”
“—thirsty.”
With that pronouncement, the girls reached down and the mountain provided them each with a stone cup filled with the same liquid James had offered me earlier.
“You want something, Bay?” James asked, and I couldn't help but notice that he shortened my name the way Delia and Zo did.
“I'm fine,” I said, even though my tongue was suddenly doing its very best imitation of cardboard.
“You're—”
“—human.”
“We—”
“—can—”
“—smell it—”
“—on you.”
I wondered if this was what Eze had pictured when she'd left me to get to know the others.
“She's Sidhe,” James said. “She belongs here.”
His words were so emphatic that he attracted the attention of the others.
“James is right. Our blood runs in her veins, hers in ours.” This was from Axia.
Kiste and Cyna did everything but hiss at her.
“She hasn't done anything wrong,” Lyria said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She wouldn't meet my eyes or theirs, but her words seemed to carry some weight with them.
“She's here on my father's invitation,” Xane said. “And as much as it pains me to say it, Lyria's right. She hasn't done anything wrong.”
Kiste and Cyna sulked, burrowing into James until it was hard to tell that they were three separate people.
“Bailey, you look thirsty,” Xane cut in, his tone so weighted down with superiority that I wasn't sure how he fit any words into the sentence to begin with. “Would you like some water?”
Suddenly, I was being offered three cups of water at once, one each from the heirs to the Otherworld thrones.
I reached out to take the one Axia offered, but at the last second, I saw something in her eyes that made me drop my hand. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was my imagination.
Maybe it was a warning.
“Bailey, it's time to go. It will be morning soon in the mortal world, and you have yet to weave.”
I'd never been so glad to see Adea and Valgius. Eze and Drogan stood behind them, watching me, their expressions gentle and their features heartrendingly beautiful. As I looked upon them and thought about what this man and this woman had once been to the Greeks, I felt like I was staring at two stone statues, like their smiles were carved into faces as old as this mountain itself and didn't reflect anything except the carver's intent.
My hand went again to my necklace, and words flooded my brain from all directions.
She reeks of mortality.
We will have her.
I will have her.
Will she drink?
I dropped the necklace.
“Sometime you're going to have to tell me where you got that thing.” James leaned forward as he whispered.
“Sometime,” I whispered back, “you're going to have to tell me who you were to the ancient Greeks.” And, for that matter, who Kiste and Cyna were supposed to be.
James offered me a lopsided grin, but said nothing.
“Bailey,” Valgius said, his tone vaguely amused. “We must go.”
“Good night, Bailey,” Drogan said. Xane echoed his father.
“Good morn,” Eze corrected, and her daughters, their voices light, did the same.
“Good to meet you.” This was from James.
“Good—”
“—bye.”
Kiste and Cyna were all too happy to see me depart. I wasn't sure what to expect as I left the mountain and the beings I'd met, but soon all of my questions faded away, because Adea, Valgius, and I were running again, down the mountain, through land and forest, until all I could hear or think or remember was the sound of my own feet hitting the ground and the unadulterated, ecstatic joy of being who and what, where and when I was.
Sidhe. Home.
Nothing could temper the beauty of this place. Nothing could stop the pull I felt toward it, and as Adea, Valgius, and I finally stopped running and the three of us joined hands, I knew deep down that nothing could keep me from coming back. I refused to close my eyes this time, not wanting to cheat myself out of the wonders I might see by keeping them open.
“Think of the Seal, Bailey. Think of the two of us. Think of what it means to be born and to live and to die.”
Birth. Death. Life.
Valgius. Adea. Me.
And suddenly, we were back. Knowing what I had to do, I walked like a zombie to the Seal and let the connection take hold, funneling all mortal souls and destinies into my body and into my hands. And then, because I had to, I wove and secretly wished I was running instead.
“Good morning, Oakridge! I'm Craaaaazy Mike and you're listening to K-K-K-KHITS. It's seven a.m., and I'm thinking about the seven deadly sins. Which one are you? Give us a call here at the studio, and the craaaaaaaziest answers will make it on air.”
I was pretty sure that by “craziest answers,” Crazy Mike meant “people who say lust.” I was equally sure that I wasn't about to stick around to find out. I reached out with one hand, and when I swiped air instead of alarm, I threw my pillow in the general direction of the sound. When that proved useless, I narrowed my eyes and allowed a warm feeling to spread out from my body and attack the offending appliance, which promptly burst into flames.
In retrospect, that probably wasn't a good idea.
“Bailey Mar—aaaaaaaaaackkkkl” My mom's drive-by scolding jerked to a stop,
and she let loose an ear-piercing shriek. Proving that her completely unsuper-natural Mom abilities were more useful than my superpowers, she almost instantaneously acquired a fire extinguisher from our utilities closet and made quick work of my blazing alarm.
Crazy Mike wasn't going to be bothering me again.
“Are you okay?” my mom asked, still wielding the fire extinguisher like a madwoman, as if the radio might reignite any second.
“I'm fine,” I said, but the words fell flat. I wasn't fine. I was lost. Lonely. Alone. I missed the Otherworld the way I'd never missed anything in my life, the way I knew deep down that I would miss my friends once they went off and started living their exciting post-high school lives.
My mom seemed to sense that I was less than chipper, though she could have never, in her wildest dreams, come anywhere close to guessing why.
“You'll feel better once you have a plan,” my mom said, imparting what passed in her mind for words of maternal wisdom. “You just need to narrow down your list a little and decide where you want to apply. Those deadlines will sneak up on you before you know it, and I think not applying anywhere early is part of what's stressing you out.”
If I took the Otherworld out of the picture, my mom was simultaneously almost right and horribly wrong. The fact that I didn't have a plan for the future was stressing me out, but the fact that I hadn't opted for early admission was my one saving grace. At least this way I could still live in denial, much as I was still coming to terms with the fact that I'd spent the night in a world that made the Nexus seem like the redheaded stepchild of mythical places.
“You'd better get a move on,” my mom said, cutting our heart-to-heart surprisingly and mercifully short. “At this rate, you won't even have time to wash your hair.” With those words, she lifted the fire extinguisher higher and squirted it again, just to be safe, and then exited my room, leaving my alarm clock and my dresser covered in weird foamy stuff that made my eyes burn.
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