“But the boy apparently is. I’ve seen the tattoo on his chest. I don’t know which branch of the Brood he’s from, but someone will. Perhaps they will know what to do with him—more than just ‘go east into the mountains’.” She looked levelly into Emily’s face. “The Brood takes care of our own. He’s my responsibility as long as he’s here. You and your friend are not. I’m offering you a place with us, but you are not Broodsmen. Go, if you will, or stay, but Michael stays with us.”
Emily rifled through her tired brain for another argument, but in her exhaustion, came up with nothing.
“Sleep on it. You can decide in the morning. There are a few hours before dawn. Go get some rest. Garrett, show them where they can sleep.”
* * *
The door had hardly closed behind them before Corbbmacc’s composure slipped, and he was seething.
“Playing the hero? I wanted to do something constructive, besides sitting on my hands in the safe house! Which is all Paige wants to do anymore. What the hell has happened to her?”
Garrett led them along the wall, saying nothing. He seemed content to let Corbbmacc storm. Emily’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two boys, unsure what, if anything, she should say.
“Dammit, Garrett, I was scared she was going to die! I couldn’t let that happen after she’d helped Mona. I just couldn’t do it.”
Garrett spun on his heel, and in the moonlight, his bulk and reptilian appearance surrounded him with an aura of intimidation.
“Don’t you think I know that, Corbb? Shit!”
They stared at each other for a moment.
“She’s never been this unreasonable,” Corbbmacc raged on.
“She’s tired, Corbbmacc. She had to move everyone who was staying at the safe house out in a hurry, including Mona, an idiot boy that has to be watched to make sure he doesn’t go wandering off every minute of the goddamn day, and the semi-comatose girl you were off trying to get help for. It’s been a long few days, and we have to be back on the move in the morning.”
Corbbmacc was silent, but Emily could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Garrett turned away and led them on.
“I know you wanted to do something to help Celine,” he said, not looking back at Corbbmacc, “but the way you went about it was stupid. You need to be smart about things, Corbb. You’re not a fool. If you would just take time to think about things before you did them, you’d be a huge asset to the Brood.”
“Don’t lecture me about the Brood,” Corbbmacc spat. “My parents…”
“They led the Brood in Coalhaven,” Garrett cut him off. “I know, Corbb. I was there. But being their son doesn’t mean you’ve inherited the position. You have to earn your keep, just like the rest of us.”
He stopped and pushed open a door in the wall.
“This is our room, Corbbmacc. Get comfortable. I’ll be back after I take Emily to hers, and we’ll talk.”
Corbbmacc looked as though he was going to argue, then he shrugged and turned toward the door.
After a moment’s indecisiveness, Emily reached out and touched his arm. At first, she thought he was going to ignore her and walk away, but after a beat, he turned and met her gaze.
“Thanks again,” she told him. “For everything.”
All of the rage seemed to drain out of him. She saw the defiance leave his face, and his shoulders sagged a little.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, and the bitterness in his voice hurt her heart a little. “We didn’t do what we set out to do. Paige is right, and Garret is right. I’m a fool.”
For a long moment, Emily looked into Corbbmacc’s drawn and tired face. He was a long way from being the boy she’d met in the stables at Seven Skies. Their time together in the mines had etched lines across his countenance that hadn’t been there before. There were dark circles under his eyes and dried blood smeared across his brow. He looked older and very, very tired.
The thought brought Celine’s face to her mind, and the swath of snow white that was beginning to dominate her golden locks.
We’re all getting older, she thought, wondering what she looked like now. It’d been a long time since she’d seen her own reflection in a proper mirror. Had she aged as much as Corbbmacc or Celine? Did it matter?
Corbbmacc turned away and went into the room he would share with Garrett.
Garrett sighed, staring after him.
“He’s not a bad guy, you know,” he told Emily as he turned and walked on.
“I know.”
He led her to a smaller door set into the corner of the main room.
“It’ll be dark in there. It’s a small room. Celine’s on a cot to the left of the door as you go in. There’s a second cot set up for you on the right.”
“Thanks, Garrett.”
“No problem.”
“Tell Corbbmacc…not to be so hard on himself,” she said, not meeting Garrett’s gaze.
To her surprise, Garrett laughed softly, and she raised her head to look up into his strange, alien face. His expression was still impossible for her to discern, but there was no mistaking his amusement as he caught a glimpse of her perplexed look and laughed harder.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Emily,” he said, trying to regain his composure. “Corbb will get over his brooding self-recriminations by the morning and be back to his headstrong, arrogant, oblivious self again. Trust me. How do you think he keeps landing himself in trouble?”
Emily smiled a little. “Okay.”
Garrett turned away from her, adjusting the weight of the crossbow on his shoulders as he did.
“He’s not such a bad guy, you know,” she said, grinning as she echoed Garrett’s words back at him.
“I know,” Garrett said, and she could hear the smile in the big man’s voice.
He started away, and Emily turned and went into her room.
A pair of luminous silver eyes appeared in the darkness as she closed the door softly behind her. Rascal mewed softly from where he lay beside Celine, then closed his eyes again.
“Shhh,” Emily soothed, trying to picture the kitsper as just a cat. It was easier not to find him so unsettling when she couldn’t see his wings or tail.
She felt for the cot in the dark and sat down on the edge of it. The only sound was Celine’s gentle breathing, and she listened to it, comforted by how normal it seemed.
After a time, a faint warbling noise reached her ears, almost beyond her hearing. She frowned, trying to figure out what it could be, then realized it was Rascal purring. She smiled as she took off her boots and stretched out across her cot with a groan. Every bit of her ached.
One way or the other, whether heading south or east, she’d be back on the move in just a couple of hours. She needed to rest.
She stared into the darkness, and her thoughts turned to Daniel. She wondered where he was—if he was even alive. Had he gotten away? Had Maddy and the other prisoners? Would she see them again? She hoped she would. She and Corbbmacc likely owed Daniel their lives.
And she promised him she’d come back for him. When this mess was over, she intended to make good on that promise.
Thinking of Daniel reminded her of the crystal he’d wanted her to have. She reached up and pulled it out of her pocket. She couldn’t see it in the dark, but she ran her fingers over it, feeling the rough surface of the side that had been part of the chamber wall, then the smooth side, where Maddy had so painstakingly drawn it free from the earth. It didn’t feel remotely shaped like a chess knight anymore. It just felt like a chunk of rock. Maybe she’d imagined that part.
Sleepily, she traced its edges. She’d seen Derek through this crystal. She wondered if she could make that happen again.
Rascal’s eyes appeared suddenly in the darkness, winking on like a pair of silver headlights. It made her think of the Cheshire Cat from Wonderland. She felt like Alice, trapped in a world full of mysteries and strange creatures. If it were only the Queen of H
earts who was searching for her…
Emily let her eyes slide shut, and she drifted off to sleep, still clutching the crystal in her hands.
* * *
She stands atop the wall of a great castle. Her hands rest upon the battlements, and she feels the cool, damp stone beneath her palms. Far below her, the world is shrouded in mist and fog. The air is cool upon her face, and it is clean and full of a delicious sweetness.
The sun is rising. She sees its rays, made ghostly in the mist. Its light paints the horizon first a royal purple, then a dusky pink. She watches it, transfixed.
“It’s a beautiful place,” a voice says beside her.
She turns to see Derek standing there, looking just as he had on the shore of that great lake.
“Yes,” she agrees, smiling at him. She feels utterly at ease. Her gaze shifts back to the sunrise. Now the light is beginning to color the mist and fog as well, turning the landscape below into a child’s watercolor painting of insubstantial pastels.
“Do you remember what I told you, the last time we met, Emily?”
She smiles, watching as a bird takes wing, bursting forth from the forest that surrounds them and climbing heavenward. Sunlight gleams from its brightly colored feathers; it is beautiful and utterly unconscious of its own magnificence. The world is a wondrous place.
“I remember.”
“What was it?” he presses.
“You said…I had a choice.”
“Do you remember what it was?”
She looks at him, feeling a faint pang of irritation.
“You ask too many questions,” she says and laughs despite herself. “Corbbmacc says I do, but I think you’re worse.”
Derek’s laughter joins hers, and their voices mingle in beautiful harmony. It feels good to laugh with Derek, as if they have done so a thousand times before.
“Perhaps you’re right. But do you remember?”
“I could go east, into the mountains, and find the lake. Or I can go…go home.” All of the mirth leaves her then, and she grows serious. She studies Derek’s expression and the way the light reflects off his eyes and the horns that frame his face.
“That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? Because my choice is now.”
It isn’t a question, but Derek nods anyway.
“I can go east,” she says. “I can find the lake and finish what I started.”
Derek nods again, but he is no longer looking at her; now he is the one surveying the lands that surround this fortress.
“Or I can go home.”
She thinks of home—not the house she’d lived in with her mother and stepfather, but the places that had been her refuge from that hell. She thinks of gingerbread lattes at Starbucks; she thinks of Casey and Coach Anders; she thinks of toilets that flush and showers with water so hot it nearly burns her skin.
She thinks of hockey.
“If you go to Coalhaven,” Derek says, interrupting her thoughts, “there is a witch there who is part of the Dragon’s Brood. She could, in time, find a way to send you back. She is very powerful, and she will understand why you are here.”
He turns to her then. He takes her shoulders and gently forces her to look at him.
“You can go back, but you can only do it now. If you don’t go to Coalhaven now, this chance will be gone.”
“Why?” she asks, feeling her heart begin to race. It feels as though some predatory creature is closing in on her, and she can’t outrun it—not this time.
“Because there is only so much time.” A sad expression comes to his face as he looks at her. “Each of us…we’re only given so much time, and then it is over.”
Go east, or go south. Those were her options, then. It was simple, really.
The sound of pounding hooves comes to them on the morning air, and they turn as one to look down.
The fog has begun to dissipate, and a dirt road is now visible. It wends its way through a lush forest toward the castle, and as they watch, they see a man clad in armor as black as midnight, riding toward them out of the mist.
“He failed,” Derek says quietly. “And I failed.”
He touches her arm, and she looks back at him. His green eyes blaze in his face with a fierce pride that she does not understand.
“You can succeed where we could not, Emily. You are the right one. But you must decide for yourself.”
From somewhere deep inside, she hears a voice. At first, she thinks it is Coach Anders’s voice, but as the words echo in her mind and begin to fade, she knows it is her own, and she has already made her decision.
Remember your friends.
Her mind splits once again, and she finds that the sensation no longer frightens her. It is becoming familiar.
And as the two halves of her mind vie for her attention, she understands that the phrase that has been haunting her means two different and distinct things.
She grasps at this thought, wanting to hold it—examine it—before it drifts away. It is the key that will open the door.
And that door is inside of her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The group that gathered amidst the broken remnants of the library’s main room had a strange assortment of faces. It was the first time Emily had seen them all together in a single place, and she hadn’t realized how many there were in Paige’s company. Most of the two dozen men and women looked like perfectly ordinary humans. A few were flyers like Paige, and one man near the back of the group had the same kind of spiraling horns as Derek and Daniel. Flashes of fur or claws revealed that there were other non-humans in their midst, but in the gloom, she couldn’t see them properly.
Emily glanced over at Celine, sitting beside her on the edge of a stained child-sized table. She was pale but seemed much better than she had been. The triangle of white that fanned out across her hair seemed unnaturally bright in the dim light, a drift of snow in sunshine. Rascal perched on her shoulder, his tail coiled companionably around her neck. He, too, seemed to be studying the crowd with keen interest.
They’d hardly had time for a brief embrace before Corbbmacc had been dragging them from their room. Emily didn’t feel like she’d slept at all. Exhaustion, probably worsened by the illness she’d experienced in the mines, was weighing her down. She was starving, too.
All that aside, she wanted time to consider the strange dream that had highlighted the few hours of rest she’d been allowed. Had it been just a dream? Or should she treat it like her vision in the mines? Her gut told her to trust it. But she needed more time to think—time she was not going to get. She felt a surge of frustration. She was so close to understanding…something.
She reached up, touching the crystal in her pocket through the soft leather of the jerkin she still wore. She felt its weight and thought of Daniel. She needed to keep her frustration from getting the better of her. She needed to be strong. With a slight shake of her head, she steeled herself for what she knew she had to do.
Paige stood before them flanked by Garrett and the Wraith. Her wings were folded, flowing from her shoulders like an iridescent cloak. She surveyed those before her with her hands clasped behind her back. The ever-present fedora sat, cocked back as always, atop her dark hair. Her expression was impassive, as unreadable as Garret’s alien features or the shadowy depths of the Wraith’s hood.
She sent for them all before dawn, and they’d slowly gathered here in the library’s main room, picking their way through the debris and claiming places to sit or stand. The low murmur of conversation had risen to a crescendo as people had arrived, but was now little more than the whisper of an autumn breeze. All eyes rested expectantly on Paige and her deputies, waiting.
“The sun will be up in just a few minutes,” Paige began, and what little conversation remained died away. “As soon as it is, we’re going to head out. The guards will still be searching the city for us, but we should have no trouble evading them in the underground tunnels, and most or all of the wraiths will be dormant during the dayl
ight hours.”
“Where are we going?” a man asked, stepping forward. He towered over Paige, but his slender frame gave him the fragile, brittle look of an overgrown spider. His movements were a series of twitches and jerks, and his eyes seemed just a little too large for his face.
Paige frowned but did not reprimand the man.
“We’re going to Coalhaven to seek shelter with the new branch of the Brood there. That should be obvious.”
“I’m not going back there,” the man spat. “They didn’t want me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to come crawling back to them asking for help now.”
“You’ll do as you’re told, Haake,” Paige said smoothly.
“Like hell I will.”
They stared at one another for a moment. The man, Haake, opened his mouth to say something more, but Paige raised a hand to forestall him.
“Wait. If you want to leave, you can leave. I don’t have the time or inclination to stop you, but there might be another option that may suit you better.”
Her eyes fell on Emily.
“What have you decided? Are you and your friend coming with us to Coalhaven or not?”
There was a long silence as everyone turned to look at her. Emily took a deep breath, closed her eyes as she counted to three, and then got slowly to her feet. This was it, then, she realized. It was now or never.
“When Corbbmacc brought me to you,” she said, her voice low and calm, “you said the wizard told you I was coming. He told you I’d bring a boy.” She turned to look at Michael, and the congregation followed her gaze. He sat on the floor near the back of the room. He was looking up at one of the high, arched windows, where a faint ray of light was just becoming visible.
“It’s a simple question,” Paige said, a bite of impatience creeping into her voice. “Are you coming to Coalhaven or not?”
Emily turned back to face Paige and the others. Garrett shook his head at her behind Paige’s back. She wasn’t sure if that was a warning, a refusal, or something else, and it didn’t matter. This was the end of the game, and you did what you had to, to tie things up.
“You said he told you I would know what to do with the boy, and that he was the key to breaking Marianne’s stranglehold over you and the people she rules. That’s what the Dragon’s Brood wants, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’ve been fighting for?”
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