Mad Magic

by Nicole Conway

  For hours, while Zeph was away at work, I studied magic and spellwork. I read my dad’s journals, and thumbed my way through all the old documents he had collected. So many of them contained intricate illustrations not only of spells, but also artifacts and maps. Reading them was like stepping off the edge of reality into a dream. I was immersed in that world. My soul was drenched with wonder at everything I learned. And with every page I studied, I found myself ravenous for more.

  Time always seemed to blitz by, never leaving me in a good place to pause my work when it came time to hide everything again. I was learning so much about the faerie world, and more importantly, about my dad. Reading his journal was like crossing time and space to have a heart-to-heart chat with him. It was as surreal as it was precious to me.

  I ran my fingers across the pages covered in my dad’s handwriting. This journal was all about the history of Fir Darrig and a group of other faeries. He called them the pilgrims—a word I had heard numerous times now. According to his journal, the five pilgrims had been the first faeries to ever come to our world. They’d fled here after the destruction of their own world, somewhere far across time and space, and had come searching for a new place to call home. It reminded me of what Eldrick had said before—about how he had not been born in the human world. Now … I finally understood it.

  I was surprised that of five pilgrims, I recognized most of the names. There were two I’d never heard of before, Aneira and Belisma, but I knew the name Gabriel right away. Dad’s rushed notes said that he was a sylph lord of incredible beauty with wings of gold. All the sylphs running around now, be they good or bad, were his descendants. Then there was Erebos, which was a name I recognized from Greek mythology. Although Dad’s journal explained he was apparently a type of faerie called a barghest. He was known by many other names and titles, including the “Bogeyman.” Later that had somehow been changed to boogeyman, just as Zeph had said. Sometimes he appeared as a great black dog, often with three heads, and other times he was more wolf-like.

  Erebos, I suspected, must be Eldrick’s father.

  Lastly, I recognized Fir Darrig’s name. Written beneath it were lengthy descriptions and details, many jumped together as though they’d been added over time. Fir Darrig was a sidhe. He had been a beautiful, powerful faerie who served as an advisor in the courts of human kings and queens for ages. He was revered by his own kind, and loved by all as a wise and gentle spirit, represent the beauty and purity of nature.

  But like in all faerie tales, something had gone wrong. My dad still hadn’t been sure what it was exactly. He wrote that he suspected it had something to do with a human, a princess, that had done something terrible to Fir Darrig. My dad wasn’t positive about all that, but he did seem very sure that this incident is what most likely led to the original split between the two faerie courts.

  I stopped reading for a moment. “Eldrick?”

  “Yes?” he answered from over the rim of a coffee mug, as usual.

  “Did you know Fir Darrig before all this?” I held up the journal so he could see which part I was reading.

  Eldrick scanned the page. “I knew of him, but I didn’t know him personally,” he said. “He’s far older than I am. My father found him obnoxious, although apparently not enough to avoid marrying into his bloodline.”

  “Y-you mean …”

  “Yes.” He leaned back in his seat again and went on sipping on his fifth cup of coffee. “My mother is one of Fir Darrig’s daughters.”

  I had to let that sink in for a moment. “What about Zeph? I mean, I know you said his father was some kind of shapeshifter. But no one knows who is mother is?”

  Eldrick flicked me a glance over the rim of his mug. “No. You see, Hedley Kow is a well-known philanderer, especially when it comes to lovely faerie women. He’s been known to use his abilities to trick them into, well, I’m sure you can figure that part out for yourself. Among our people, there are few who could count themselves more lovely than the sidhe.”

  I blushed. Wow. I wondered if Zeph had ever …

  “You must understand that as a race, the sidhe are very proud. They possess a great deal of magical power that surpasses most other fae. They are the ones most often depicted in famous artwork, and they are frequently mistaken for angels or even gods and goddesses. But for all their beauty, they have one weakness.”

  I held my breath. “What is it?”

  He smiled strangely, almost sadly. “The same weakness that all fae share, regardless of our particular species. We have an inborn, often uncontrollable, interest in humanity. We cannot help it. None of us are exempt from that innate desire to be close to humankind.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that. “But Zeph told me before that there are lots of faeries who hate humans now. Even you did, right?”

  “True. Our attachment to your kind consistently causes problems. It’s an inconvenient instinct.” He placed his mug down on the table. “To understand us fully, Josie, you must stop trying to compare us to humans. We don’t think the way you do. We don’t react the same way. You have to put aside that expectation.”

  I frowned. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t understand.

  “Take for example the beasts of your own world. In remote places where humans have yet set foot, wild creatures do not fear you. They often seek you out rather than running away, curious to learn what you are. That is their instinct—something entirely beyond their control,” he explained, his brow crinkling with thought. “In that same way, our initial instinct is to want to be close to humans. However after generations upon generations of negative experiences, we have learned that not all of you mean well. Our curiosity has become caution and fear, which can evolve into hatred given the right … encouragement. This is what became of Fir Darrig, or so the rumor goes.”

  “This princess did something to him, didn’t she?” I dared to ask. “To make Fir Darrig turn on everyone?”

  Eldrick seemed to grow distant. He looked away, staring at the pile of scrolls and papers all around us. “I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what transpired, but I can imagine that loving someone would make a person—or even a fae—blind to any ulterior motives. No one sees a dagger in the hand of someone they love until it is already planted in their back.”

  The journal in my hands suddenly felt heavier. I ran my fingers over the crinkled, weathered pages again. Eldrick’s words were sad, but I couldn’t deny their truth.

  I went on reading. My dad had been searching for ways to bind or catch faeries, and he wrote down all of his experiments in great detail. In most of them, he’d used Zeph as his guinea pig. Lining spell circles in salt worked best for dealing with most spirits—just like with the sylph. Although, he had also been experimenting with the use of a variety of other things, as well—oils, wax, herbs, and even different varieties of gemstones.

  Dad had found that certain stones contained crystallized magical energy that could be used to strengthen spellwork. Rubies, for instance, contained vast amounts of concentrated magical power, the most of any stone he’d studied. There was even a rare kind, a star ruby, that was basically the equivalent of a magical bomb. Opals, sapphires, and quartz were quite potent, too. Ironically, diamonds didn’t contain much magic, so they weren’t very valuable for spellwork. The problem with the stones was that they sort of behaved like a bullet for a gun. You could use them once, draw out their full power in a burst or even to contain something inside them, but after that … they were essentially useless.

  Well, for magical purposes, anyway.

  It also only worked if the stones were natural. They had to be formed in nature, cultivated over time to absorb magic. Gems and stones produced in a lab wouldn’t contain any magic at all, and were also useless for spellwork.

  I kept reading, burying my nose in my dad’s words while the last few minutes ticked away. Zeph would be back soon. I’d have to make sure to have everything hidden before then. I didn’t want to imagin
e how he’d react if he caught me studying faerie magic like this.

  Despite all the research Dad had done, the pages upon pages of handwritten notes and illustrations, and all the time he had poured into trying out different combinations of spells and materials, at the end of the last journal, he admitted he still didn’t think he had found something strong enough to contain a being like Fir Darrig. For that problem, Dad believed there was one solution—only one spell in the entire history of the fae that could possibly seal Fir Darrig away forever.

  He called it the Fibbing Gate.

  Even the word, written in the faerie language, curled upon itself as though it were trying to hide. It was a spell, some ancient tool for passing from one realm to the next. A portal. Dad wrote that he didn’t quite understand it, but he knew it involved the use of a strange mineral called staurolite. In the middle of the page, Dad had sketched out what looked like a three-dimensional cross shape.

  “A weeping stone.” Eldrick was reading over my shoulder.

  His closeness made me jump in surprise. “A what?”

  “It goes back to our pilgrimage into your world,” he explained. “A very, very long time ago, even before the first songs. Our kind came into this world through an ancient gateway, fleeing from an unspeakable terror that was ravaging our own realm. Our home had become a place of darkness and fear—a place without moonlight.”

  My skin prickled. “What … kind of terror?”

  Memories flickered in the depths of his silver eyes. “There is no word for them in the human language. We called them skiia—the devourers. They cannot be bargained or reasoned with. Their only motive is to drain every drop of magic they possibly can, and as they do, they spread like a plague.”

  I swallowed and sank back in my seat.

  “We came here as refugees after our own world was overrun,” Eldrick murmured. “Humankind looked upon us with awe and adoration. We made our home here, eager to share this beautiful world with you, but not before sealing away the ancient gateway so that the evil destroying our own homeland would never find its way here.”

  “The Fibbing Gate,” I whispered.

  Eldrick’s body shuddered at the name. “I was very young when it happened. My memories of it have all but faded to nothing. In that same way, such stories of the gateway have become myths. My father told them to me as a child.” He ran one of his fingers over the drawing on the page. “Weeping stones were said to guard it. They stones are made of iron, which as you know has incredible power against faerie magic, so that no one would ever be able to open it again.”

  “Why would my dad be interested in it?”

  His expression steeled as he studied the page. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “But there’s someone else who might.”

  “Who?” I waited anxiously.

  “Zeph’s brother, Frederic, gave up practicing changeling magic to become a scholar for the Seelie Court,” he muttered quietly. “He’s a guardian of the ancient songs, a keeper of the scrolls.”

  Suddenly, the front door burst open.

  Zeph stood in the doorway, a tower of wrath. His violet eyes glowed with fury as he stormed into the room. “You,” he roared and slammed the door with a violent crack. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Eldrick growled back, a beastly sound that brought back memories of when I had first seen him as that black wolf. Somewhere under his sleek, handsome exterior, that beast was still lurking. “She is the vessel, so she stands in both worlds. That means she has a right to know.”

  The outline of Zeph’s body rippled. I could see traces of glowing runes beginning to peek through his clothing. “But you had no right to tell her!”

  “Her father’s words have told her, not mine. You are the one with no right—no right to keep his findings from her!” Eldrick’s form began to waver, as well. In the blink of an eye, his human shape dissolved into a churning black mist. When it became solid again, he took the shape of that huge, silver-eyed wolf. His snout wrinkled as he showed his teeth.

  “What’s the plan, genius? You let her start slinging spells around and Fir Darrig will come here full force. You ready to fight him head-on?” Zeph snarled back, showing his own pointed canines. “Or maybe you want her to die so your contract will finally be broken?”

  Eldrick’s wolf ears slicked back, his body coiling to lunge.

  “Stop it!” I stood up and put myself between them. “Zeph, it’s my fault. Eldrick was just following my orders. You know he doesn’t have a choice. He has to do as I say. Quit lashing out at him when I’m the one you’re really pissed at.”

  Eldrick’s growling ceased. He stared at me, his wolfish head cocked to the side.

  “I’m not using you as a scapegoat. Besides, he was bound to find out what we were up to sooner or later.” I smiled. “It’ll be okay. I can handle this.”

  I turned to face Zeph again, ready to make my case. He never gave me a chance. Snatching me by the arm, he dragged me out of the apartment and tossed me into the hall.

  “You can handle it?” he shouted.

  I tried backing away, but there was only so far I could go. He pinned me against the wall, standing so close I could see tiny flecks of gold hidden in the violet color of his eyes. His nostrils flared, and a vein throbbed in the side of his neck.

  “You have no idea what you’re messing with. You stupid, stupid …” His voice trailed off as though the rage were too much. He clenched his fists, making his strong arms go solid.

  “Zeph—”

  “How could you do this? I specifically told you not to! Don’t get involved! Stay out of it! No magic—none!” He slammed a hand against the wall right next to me. “Are you just trying to screw with me? You think it’s a joke? You want to die, is that it? You want to make me watch Fir Darrig take you?” His eyes flashed with blind fury. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you doing this? Tell me!”

  “for you!”

  That shut him up.

  For a few seconds, the only sound between us was our own furious, panting breaths as we glared at one another. Waves of anger roared through my body, making my fingers twitch and my vision spot.

  “You know why I have to do this,” I spoke again, trying a softer voice. “What I don’t get is why you think you have to do this by yourself. You are not alone. I am here—right here—ready to fight for you. But I can’t fight what I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want you to fight at all! That’s the whole damn point!” His voice broke and his shoulders seized. There was fresh agony in his gaze. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve sacrificed—all of it was so you could be safe! So you wouldn’t have to fight! So you could have a normal life.”

  “Zeph, abnormal people can’t have normal lives. And there’s absolutely nothing normal about being a living battery for faerie magic.”

  “You could still be happy,” he argued. “That’s what you wanted. That’s what you made me promise!”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I know you don’t remember. You were a kid,” he rasped through deep, frustrated breaths and turned his face away. “You just …”

  “I what?” Reaching up, I gently grasped his chin so he would look at me again.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, tears running down the sides of his face as he clenched his teeth. I’d never seen him this upset before. It made my insides bind up in anxious knots and any lingering flames from my temper instantly fizzled.

  Slowly, Zeph took my hand and began moving my fingers around so that our pinkies were interlocked. “I used to babysit you and your brother sometimes. I probably wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for a babysitter, but for some reason you would always beg me to play with you. You’d do this sad face thing where you rolled your lip out and … well, I couldn’t say no. The damn lip thing always got me.”

  He finally met my gaze again, tears still pooling in his eyes.

&nbs
p; “One day in the summer the three of us were out playing in the yard. It was just around sunset. There were fireflies everywhere, so you and William wanted to run around and catch them. And you held my hand like this—with your little finger wrapped around mine. You asked me to promise that I would make you happy forever. That was the contract we made … after you captured my heart.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t move. Even if I didn’t remember any of that, there was no denying the brokenness on his face as he squeezed his pinky finger around mine. This wasn’t a lie. This was the first real truth he’d ever told me. No more secrets. No more lies.

  “I love you, Josie. I know it probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but I have been yours alone ever since that day.”

  My whole body flushed as my heart seemed to freeze in my chest.

  “There’s nothing Fir Darrig or anyone else can do to me that will make me betray that promise. If it means I have to die to keep you away from him, then so be it. I’m not afraid of dying if it means you’ll be safe. He can do whatever he wants to me. He can tear me apart—but he can’t have you.”

  I grabbed his face, dragging him closer so I could press my mouth against his. It was clumsy and desperate, but I didn’t care.

  I wanted him so badly nothing else mattered.

  Zeph sucked in a sharp breath and went stiff.

  Oh no. Had I … just messed everything up? Had he meant a different kind of love? My brain swirled with anxiety as I began to pull away.

  Zeph suddenly snagged his big arms around me. He backed me up against the wall and he kissed me back with a ferocity I wasn’t expecting. The way his lips moved against mine was rough and passionate and dangerously deep. All the anger, frustration, and doubt that had built up between us shattered instantly.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, grabbing fistfuls of the back of his shirt. I could feel the thick rolling muscles of his shoulders underneath the fabric. His hold on me shifted as he lifted me off my feet, gripping my thighs and bringing my legs around his waist. The sudden contact of his hips against mine made me gasp and blush.