Fate

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Somehow, I found that one hard to believe.

  “So you're saying she turned my cousin into a kissing ho because she's too shy to kiss anybody herself?” Zo was not amused.

  “I can stop her,” Axia said. “She'll listen to me.”

  “You're not going anywhere near A-belle,” Zo said through gritted teeth. “Not without me.”

  “She's right,” James said. “Axia, take Zo with you, and the two of you stop Lyria. Bailey and I will go after Delia and Xane.” James and Axia exchanged a look, and something else passed between them. “Hurry,” James continued. “If Xane makes it back to the Unseelie Court, it's going to take all of us to free her.”

  Axia nodded and then turned to Zo, on the verge of issuing some orders herself.

  “Why would you help me?” I blurted out.

  “Because you're Sidhe,” Axia said. “You're one of us, and where we come from, that's supposed to mean something.”

  James didn't respond, but the look on his face gave me the impression that he had his own answer, one that I couldn't bear to hear.

  I didn't want to accept their help. I didn't want to go along with their plan, because for all I knew, it was another trap. The Sidhe were tricksters, masters at manipulating others to get their own way. Still, I didn't have much of a choice. One of my best friends had just been kidnapped to the Otherworld; another one was currently possessed by a horny fairy. Whether I liked it or not, I was officially in over my head, and I needed backup, stat.

  It wasn't until after Axia and Zo took off down the hallway that I processed the fact that this plan entailed me being alone with James, but I didn't have the time or the space in my mind to complain about it. This was Delia, and some things were more important than the way my heart wrenched when James took hold of my hands.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, jerking them out of his grasp. I didn't trust him. I couldn't, and I didn't want to. For all I knew, this was part of some master plan.

  “We need to cross over,” James said. “We can't take the chance that we'll get separated. We don't have much time, and neither one of us is a match for Xane on our own.”

  I didn't tell him that I had no idea how one went about crossing from the mortal realm to the Other-world at will. As a general rule, the only surefire way I knew of to get from one world to another involved losing consciousness.

  “Today is the equinox,” James said, in the kind of voice that someone would use to talk a puppy out from underneath a car, “and because of your presence in this world, the barrier is even thinner than it normally would be on such a day. We could use the bridge I showed you to cross over, but on Mabon, we shouldn't have to. Especially you.”

  It occurred to me for the first time that the bridge I'd visited with “Alec” on our first and only date was probably the means through which James had traveled between the worlds during his stint as a spy. I hated thinking of what sitting on that bridge had been like, hated wondering how much of what “Alec” had told me was true.

  He'd said he had sisters. He hadn't sounded all that happy about it. Was he referring to Kiste and Cyna?

  “So do we go to the bridge, or are you going to trust me now?” James asked, holding out his hands.

  Trust him? No way. Still, Delia was in trouble, and every second I waited here was a second that Delia was alone with Drogan's son.

  “Let's go,” I said. “Here. Now. Whatever. Just tell me what to do.”

  James seemed to accept that. Gently, he took my hands. “Think about the Otherworld. Think about the rivers, and how the blood of that place flows in your veins. Think about the mountains and the caverns, the colors that you could never find on this side. Think about light so bright that it would blind mortal eyes. Think about dark prisms full of colors. Think about the feeling you get in your gut when we're all together.”

  His words were soft and rhythmic, and something about the way he strung the sentences together hypnotized me. As he spoke, I felt my anger and my fear melting away until all that was left was my desire to be a part of that world. I wanted to hate feeling this way, but nothing in my mind could overcome the strength of that connection, and as I lost myself in it and in James's melodic voice, I could feel my earthly form blur, and suddenly, we were elsewhere.

  The scenery assaulted my senses and soothed them at the same time, and it took a few seconds for my mind to catch up with the rest of me. My whole body buzzed with warmth, but there were goose bumps on my arms, and when I met James's eyes, a shiver ran up my spine even as the grip between our hands burned white.

  It took everything I had to pull away, and he dropped my hands, averting his gaze for the smallest moment as he recovered from whatever it was that had passed between the two of us. Then his face was blank, and I wondered if I'd imagined the look in his eyes the moment before.

  “Delia,” James said.

  “Delia,” I repeated, and for the first time, my mental image of my friends and what they meant to me was as strong in this world as it was at home. “How are we going to find her?”

  “Xane will take her to the Unseelie Court,” James said. “For all we know, he's there already, but mortals can't travel as quickly here as we can. The two of them had to have crossed over using the bridge, and it would have taken them time to get there. We'll just have to hope that Delia is slowing him down.”

  Having had the experience of trying to drag Delia through the mall at a speed greater than that of a turtle, I had considerable confidence in her ability to make darn well sure that Xane was moving at her pace and not his.

  “So we just head for the caverns and hope for the best?” I asked.

  James shook his head. “There are too many ways to get there, and if Xane isn't a complete idiot, he'll expect us to follow him.” James paused for the slightest instant. “I tried to stop him from taking her. I really did.”

  I didn't respond, but as much as he'd misled me in the past, I couldn't force myself to believe he was lying. What was wrong with me? Was I seriously lacking in all intelligence? James was a bad guy. He'd fooled me over and over again. He'd told Eze and Drogan all about me. For all I knew, he may have been Kiste and Cyna's source as well, and who knew what else he had told them. Besides which, he was one of the Furies. There was no way I should have believed a word he said.

  “So how do we find Delia?” I asked, not trusting myself to say anything else.

  James gave me a sheepish look. “Actually,” he said, “there's not much of a ‘we’ with that one. I don't know her. She's human. I'm Sidhe. There's no connection. I can't feel her. You can.”

  It made sense, and I wondered why it hadn't occurred to me. Every time I'd come to this world, I'd done it by thinking about this place and my connection to it. Each night, I'd run, and I hadn't just followed Adea and Valgius. I'd known where we were going, even if I hadn't known how. Connection and instinct were everything here, and if we were going to find Delia, I needed to search for her in the same way.

  “Just think about her,” James said. “Cast your mind out and look for her.”

  Delia, I thought, unsure whether she would hear me, or if I was even really calling to her, or if I was just thinking her name. The person who gave me my first makeover, when I was four years old. The girl who can strike fear into the hearts of an entire neighborhood just by saying “arts and crafts.” The girl who's always been popular, but has never stopped being my friend. Smarter than she appears. Occasionally shallow, but always kind. Lover of sticky foods. Fashionista.

  Friend.

  Images flashed through my mind, one after another, of the two of us growing up together. I saw Delia the way she looked at our baby ballet dance class, every inch the teeny-tiny diva. I saw her doing her best to climb trees, just to keep up with Zo. I saw the two of us at every age from the time we were born until now.

  And as all this flashed through my mind, all of the memories and everything the two of us had shared and the way that she'd always been there for me, even
when she could have had her pick of other friends, I was overcome with the feeling that nothing could take that away. Not college. Not changes. Not Xane.

  Delia.

  “I see her,” I gasped as the power of the image washed over me. “She's with Xane.” I smiled. “She's got her hands on her hips and that look on her face, the one where you know she's not going to take no for an answer.” I tilted my head to the side. “They're stopping. He's not happy about it, but they're stopping.”

  “Where?” James asked.

  “Next to a lake. It looks like she's … uhhhh …” I tried to wrap my mind around what I was seeing. “She's laying out.”

  Leave it to Delia to work on her tan at a time like this.

  “Which lake?” James asked. “There are thousands.”

  “This way,” I said, turning to my left. The image of Delia faded, but I could still feel her. The connection between the two of us was a physical thing, and even though I couldn't see it, there was no mistaking the incredible force of the pull. The two of us were bound together, and all I had to do to find her was follow the binding to its source.

  “Let's go.” The words were barely out of my mouth when I started running. This time the sights and sounds and smells of the Otherworld didn't dominate my mind. They were there and I felt them as part of myself, but Delia was there, too, and James was beside me, and those three things bled together until running wasn't about my senses or letting my hidden nature come out to play. It was about … everything.

  This was who I was. I was a friend, and I was a fairy. I belonged here, and I belonged with my girls. We'd been friends for so long that they were part of me, and in a strange way, as I ran, I realized that this meant that they were a part of the Otherworld too.

  I couldn't quite grasp the significance of that, but as I ran toward Delia and Xane and something bigger than any of us imagined at the time, Morgan's words played over and over in my head.

  Open your mind to the possibilities you refuse to see. Remember everything you've learned. I've given you everything you need. The answer is there.

  Time lost all meaning as we ran. Maybe it stopped altogether. I don't know, but as I felt myself coming closer and closer to Delia, I knew that the answer, the one Morgan had spoken of, the thing that could allow me to fight not just the young Sidhe but also Eze and Drogan and all of both courts, was coming closer too. For the first time, even though the answer was hovering just out of reach, I felt like I would find it, like reaching Delia was just a single step leading me toward the truth.

  Things must unfold as they must, Morgan had told me. You know that better than anyone, Bailey.

  Maybe I was meant to be here. Maybe Xane was meant to take Delia. Maybe James and I were meant to find them. And maybe all of this, everything that had happened—the bad and the good and even my moping—had been leading inexorably to a single point in time and destiny.

  Morgan was right. I knew better than anyone that things happened for a reason and that sometimes even the person who wove the fabric of life couldn't see the forest for the trees.

  Somehow, my hand—traitorous appendage that it was—worked its way into James's as we ran, and this time there was no heat between us, only color. Darkness, light, both and neither, played along the surfaces of our skin, emanating from our clasped hands. My senses blurred, but didn't become any less clear. Instead, I found myself hearing colors, seeing sounds, feeling the taste of the air everywhere but on my tongue.

  Everything Eze and Drogan had done had been motivated by a desire for power, but they didn't know what real power was. Once upon a time, a million years ago, Alecca had said that Sidhe didn't love, that they didn't feel things the way that humans did, and I wondered if that was why the Sidhe needed me. Because real power, real feeling, real emotion—that was something they couldn't understand the way I did. I wondered if James could feel it too, if the oneness of this moment was the same for him as it was for me, and the second the thought occurred to me, the two of us stopped running.

  We didn't drop hands, and as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, I had the answer to my question.

  “That was incredible,” James whispered, his voice— a voice that had seen ages come and go in my world— catching in his throat.

  I wouldn't look at him. Not after everything he'd done. Instead, I let my eyes go where we'd been heading all along.

  To Delia.

  She was stretched out on a lakeside beach, her legs tan in the Otherworld sun. As I watched she propped herself up on her elbows, and even though she looked almost plain in comparison to Xane's glittering pearl-white skin, she carried herself with the same confidence she had when she walked among mortals. She tossed her head and said something to Xane, and to my amazement, he smiled.

  I'd seen that smile on too many guys over the years to wonder at its meaning.

  Somehow, beyond all odds, Delia's magical C cup had done it again.

  “Did Xane just … smile?” James was incredulous. I didn't blame him. In my experience, Xane didn't just randomly break into a grin. He bestowed each smile like it was a precious gift and like those of us who were blessed to witness it should count ourselves very lucky.

  But there he was, sitting opposite Delia as she basked in the sun and tossed her thick hair over her shoulders like she was auditioning for a shampoo commercial.

  Delia, I thought, calling out to her silently.

  Bailey?

  She sat up, folding her long legs under her, much to Xane's dismay. Immediately, she started looking around.

  “Not exactly subtle, is she?” James asked under his breath.

  I snorted. Delia? Subtle? I was pretty sure those two words had never even been used in the same sentence. Everything she was, she was to the nth degree, and she didn't make apologies for any of it.

  Unfortunately, the moment Delia started looking for me, Xane registered that fact. Within seconds, he was on his feet, standing guard over her with a deadly gleam in his eye.

  Delia, I'm here. I'm going to get you out of this.

  Why? Delia sounded truly mystified. Fairy McHot-stuff here was a little uptight at first, but he's coming to see the error of his ways. And I'm pretty sure I could teach him how to be a geek.

  I tried very hard not to sigh. Words like fickle were invented for girls like Delia. He's dangerous, Delia. Do you even know who he is? He's one of the guys we're supposed to be fighting.

  Granted, technically so was James, and the two of us were still standing very, very close together.

  He's the son of Hades! The heir to the Unseelie throne. And he's totally pompous.

  He's a prince? Delia asked, giddy. Sweet!

  Meanwhile, the prince in question scanned the surroundings, and his eyes quickly landed on mine. So much for the element of surprise. The only thing left to do was to confront him head-on, so that's what I did.

  Sort of.

  “I see you've met my friend, Delia,” I said, my voice infinitely more powerful than I felt as I strode out of the forest and toward the beach. “If you wanted an introduction, all you had to do was ask.”

  Huh, I thought. So this is what false bravado feels like.

  “She's mine,” Xane said. “I'm bringing her home, and she's mine.”

  Delia cleared her throat and gave him a very pointed look. Obviously, the two of them had had this conversation before.

  “I mean, she's graced me with her presence and will do me the honor of accompanying me back to the Unseelie Court.” Xane made the correction through gritted teeth. Clearly, he wasn't used to taking orders from anyone, let alone a mortal. Luckily, however, Delia was enough of an old hat at being bossy to make up for it.

  Not satisfied with Xane's correction, she cleared her throat again.

  “What?” he asked, dragging his hand through his hair in frustration.

  “You forgot to mention the part about how my impeccable sense of style and natural beauty make you want to get in touch with your feelings,” D
elia said.

  Hehehe. Delia sent a mental laugh my way. Isn't he cute when he gets all grumpy? See that vein in his forehead?

  I couldn't believe this. She was pushing his buttons.

  On purpose. And he hated it, but was head over heels for her anyway.

  If we got out of this alive, I was never again, even for a second, going to doubt any future revelations Delia might happen to have about the male race. Seriously, whatever powers Xane had as a member of the Sidhe were nothing compared to Delia's feminine wiles.

  Unfortunately, that just made Xane all the more determined to keep her.

  “In any case,” he said, refusing to repeat Delia's line about getting in touch with his feelings, “I acted with the blessing of both courts, and she is here as my guest.”

  I took the special emphasis on the word guest to mean hostage.

  “I will do as my father asked, and bring her to the Unseelie Court. Stand in my way at your own peril.”

  “You do realize that you sound like something out of a really cheesy movie, don't you, Xaney?”

  Xaney? Seriously?

  “I have asked you repeatedly not to call me that,” Xane said, frowning.

  “And I've repeatedly called you that anyway,” Delia replied helpfully. “And FYI, threatening Bailey is a no-no. In the words of the immortal Spice Girls, if you want to be my boyfriend, you've got to be nice to my friends.”

  One of my best friends in the world had just quoted (or worse, misquoted) the Spice Girls to a modern-day Hades intent on kidnapping her to the underworld. Forget cheesy movies. This had to be a dream.

  “I have no wish to hurt her,” Xane said, addressing his words to me rather than Delia. “But I cannot allow her to take you back. Not yet.”

  I read his meaning, even if Delia did not. If I wanted Delia to be able to leave the Otherworld, I'd have to agree to stay here.

  We'd just see about that.

  “I'm not letting you take her anywhere,” I said. “This is between you and me, or your dad and me, or maybe every Sidhe and me, but you can leave my friends out of it. They didn't do anything wrong and I won't let you hurt them.”