Ironspark

by C. M. McGuire

  “If you stop moving, it’ll hurt less!” the new person snapped. No. Not new. I blinked. Jasika?!

  The bendith shrieked and kicked out, burning a fresh part of her leg on the toxic iron. Finally, with hatred seething in her eyes, she stilled. I gaped at Jasika.

  “When did this turn into a friggin’ party?” I blurted.

  Jasika jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Dom called me. Apparently, he was worried you’d get hurt and decided we ought to give you backup. But, of course, we all know the great and powerful Bryn Johnson doesn’t need help, right?”

  “I’m sorry.” Dom pushed himself to his feet, his eyes drifting to the bendith. “I’m sorry, I just … I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  The bendith’s eyes snapped to him, and for a second there was a flash of betrayal there. Then, they drifted to me. When they fell on Jasika, she snarled.

  “Not here to kill me?” Her beautiful voice grew that much more eerie coming from such a haunted face. So much about her felt wrong. On instinct, I tugged my nail free. I couldn’t think too much about Dom and Jasika being here or what assholes they were for following me. I just needed to make sure they didn’t get hurt.

  “We’ll see.” I knelt down, careful not to look right into the bendith’s eyes. “You’ve been trying to steal children in this town, right? You could have been more subtle. That guy over there actually saw you. So, are you doing it for your court?”

  The bendith looked ready to spit until a smile stretched her withered features. An acrid taste flooded my mouth. I tightened my grip on my nail.

  “Only on the one road,” she crooned, her eyes glinting. “Only from the people who live near to the forest. Maybe you’ll try and steal from us in return, hm? Thieves! All of you!”

  I stepped onto the net, pressing the iron into the exposed skin of her leg. The bendith howled.

  Dom grabbed my arm. “That’s not necessary, Bryn! We already caught her.”

  I shrugged off his arm. “Are you stealing children for the Unseelie?”

  The bendith sneered. “A pittance. Until I find what my queen and I are looking for.”

  Ash and Jake. My heart lurched. The bendith had been after the boys on Postoak, until the drone tracked me to our house. “They’re safe in the church now. You can’t have them.”

  The bendith’s smile widened. She curled her claws into the ground. “You think yourself so wise, girl. So strong. I see your mother in you.”

  Mum?

  Dom’s hands were on my arms again, restraining me. I balled my hands into fists, my face burning. “How do you know my mother?”

  “Bryn,” Jasika said softly. “She’s just trying to goad you.”

  “We all know her,” the bendith cackled. “Did you not know? She’s famous. The deserter. The thief.”

  I had to bite my tongue, even as my heart pounded. Thief. Deserter. She’d called Mum a deserter. Deserter. What did that mean for a human woman with a book of Fae magic? The world tightened around me. I felt like I was breathing through a wet cloth.

  The word clanged around in my head over and over until I could barely hear anything else.

  Deserter. Deserter. Deserter.

  “She’s just trying to get a rise out of you,” Dom repeated. “Just send her away, don’t listen to her.”

  Jasika cut in. “Are you the reason there’s been so much trouble on this road?”

  The bendith snarled at Jasika. “You’re going to regret this, child. May every baby born in this cursed town be sickly. May they colic and cry until their lungs have no more air in them. May every child in this thrice-cursed town come to serve my mistress and me. The wails of their mothers—”

  “No!” Jasika shouted. “We don’t have a quarrel with you, we just want you to leave our people alone. How can we get you to—”

  “There’s no need. The queen will come on Samhain to take what is ours.” She shifted and hissed, a fresh spot on her shoulder sizzling as she locked eyes with me. “She will take her vengeance on that bitch who betrayed her own court.”

  Her court. The echo grew louder. Deserter. Deserter. Deserter. My hands shook. No. Mum was human. She couldn’t have. No human would have ever allied themselves with them. My mum would never have made a deal. She was wrong.

  The bendith bared her teeth. “You will all pay for the traitor’s—”

  My blood boiled. I jerked away from Dom’s hold and lunged forward, plunging the nail through one of the holes in the net. Right into the bendith’s leathery throat. Sickly blue blood bubbled out.

  The bendith flailed, a wet gurgle escaping her lips. This time two pairs of arms locked on me, dragging me back. I hit the underbrush, leaves and berries flying around me. Dom raced forward, his face pale with horror. He ripped out the nail and tore off the net, but even as he pressed his hands to her throat, it was clear that he wasn’t going to save the wretched Fae. The bendith gave a few helpless twitches, her eyes wide as her irises darted back and forth for a few seconds before they stilled and went glassy. Blue stained the vibrant reds and yellows and browns of the forest floor.

  The cacophony in my head died down as I stared down at her. The creature I’d killed not in self-defense, but in anger. Our prisoner. The back of my throat burned. I tried to look away but I couldn’t. I tried to reassure myself that she’d goaded me. That she’d known what she was doing. But that didn’t make her any less dead.

  Dom stared down at her in horror for a few seconds, his arms covered in Fae blood. Then, slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, his eyes locked on the bendith’s still form. Whatever loveliness had been in her had withered away like the dead leaves around her.

  Jasika took a step forward. “Dom—”

  “This isn’t what I signed up for.” Dom’s hands curled into fists. “She was our prisoner. We had her captured.”

  My stomach squirmed. I pushed myself to my feet. “She worked for the Unseelie. She was one of the bad guys, Dom.”

  “So?” Dom turned to me, his eyes red-rimmed. “She was a living thing! I didn’t want anyone to die.”

  “Dom, I—”

  “I’m done,” he muttered before turning and stalking away.

  Jasika stared at me for a moment before she backed away, following him without even retrieving her net. And then, just like that, I was alone with the fairy’s corpse.

  I probably should have gone after them, but I didn’t.

  Thirteen

  I really didn’t like casserole. Who decided that, after tragedy, people needed to Frankenstein whatever they found in their pantry instead of just delivering some groceries? After a miserable day of being an asshole, all I wanted was a pizza. Still, I couldn’t let food go to waste.

  Ash wandered in not too long after I’d sat down, his eyes glued to his phone the whole time he made his dinner. The fluorescent lights of the church kitchen didn’t do anybody any favors, but I was pretty sure the bags under his eyes weren’t normal.

  “Do you have homework?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He just slapped some casserole onto a plate and shoved it into the microwave.

  “Hey, Martian,” I said, turning in my chair to face him. “Is school going okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Ash bit the side of his cheek and flipped through something on his phone. His hand trembled faintly.

  “Hey, are you doing okay? Are you sleeping well?”

  “No,” he ground out, pointedly dropping his hand to glare forward. When the microwave dinged, he pulled out his food and left without a word.

  A few minutes later, Jake shuffled in, his eyes glued to the floor.

  “Hey, Moonman. Do you have homework?”

  Jake grunted a non-answer and prepared a plate.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “Hey. Is everything okay with you and Ash? He wasn’t looking—”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  Jake grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and left without even bothering to heat up his food.
<
br />   I watched the open door for a while after he left, but I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. They weren’t coming back. I forced myself to take a bite of casserole and not think about the way Dom and Jasika had stared at me that afternoon or the fact that my brothers weren’t talking to me or each other or, apparently, anyone. But thinking about how much I didn’t want to think about it turned the already misguided casserole to cardboard in my mouth.

  At a quarter to nine, Dad shuffled in, his shoulders slumped and his eyes half closed, but at least he had the good sense to heat up his food. The hum of the microwave filled the space between us for a minute or so, but soon enough, that was over, and all that was left was him and me and all the stuff we didn’t want to talk about.

  He took a bite, and I took one. It felt a bit like eating with a stranger, and I couldn’t shake the ugly feeling that this was all my fault. It was one thing to have secrets. It was another thing for those to come out, and then to keep more of them.

  Dad was the first one to speak. “How’re you keeping up with your classes?”

  “Fine. Progress reports’ll be out in a few weeks.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to fall behind.” He cleared his throat. “I know you had your heart set on Penn State. I thought, maybe, we could go tour it over Christmas.”

  Penn State. It felt a million miles away. It was the sort of life another Bryn got to have. But here Dad was, trying to make sure I had it anyway. My throat tightened.

  “I thought, with the house gone, my college fund—”

  “Is still your college fund.” Dad gave me a tired smile and rested a hand on mine. “I know I’ve depended on you a lot, especially with the boys. But I don’t want you to limit yourself for us. I’ll sort out things with the insurance. It’s not your job to worry about this.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek again. I wanted so badly to be the girl who went off to college and had fun.

  “I don’t even know what I’ll study.”

  “I didn’t, either,” Dad chuckled. “My first year of college I thought I wanted to be a historian. It was no small leap to go into engineering, let me tell you. That’s part of college. It’s figuring out who you are and what sort of life you want to lead.”

  I knew what sort of life I wanted to lead. I wanted the house with the picket fence and the stupid dog who was always happy to see you and the good job that could pay for real family vacations, not the same camping trip or beach visit we’d taken every year since we’d come here. I wanted to feel safe. The question was whether or not I was the kind of person who got to live that sort of life. Maybe everything that had happened had warped me somehow inside.

  Dom’s and Jasika’s expressions wouldn’t leave my mind.

  I swallowed and squeezed Dad’s hand. I wanted to ask how he could keep up so much hope after how badly he’d been hurt by the Fae. I wanted him to tell me that, if he could keep it up after losing his wife and suffering this awful curse and being forced to leave his home, if he could still do all that and still be a good person, then I could certainly get through this. Words had never come easily for me, though, and everything I wanted to say just got caught in my throat. It was a good thing Dad was better at this than I was.

  “I just want you to be safe and happy,” he said. “That’s why we came here. You should get to live your own life. Don’t let them define you or dictate who you get to be.”

  And I could hear what he wasn’t saying. That was why he’d banned me from working with Gooding the second he’d found out about it. Dad stuff. Maybe part of me was still a little pissed about that. But he was giving me real permission to not have to be the person I’d been in the woods today. Maybe I could be just a bit better.

  I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him close. He smelled like sweat and oil. When he wrapped his arms around me in return, it felt like home.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I muttered, dropping a quick kiss to the top of his head.

  After that, we talked without really having much else to say. Dad told me about some work at the rig and how a new hire was giving him headaches. I told him about what we’d done in science. It felt like the time flew by, and suddenly, our plates were empty. I still had a stone weighing down my gut, but it was smaller now.

  When I flopped down onto my bed that night, my phone buzzed.

  Jasika: Is your dad off work on Saturdays? If so, swing by Dom’s place around 10 a.m. If not, we can come to the convent so the boys are supervised.

  Ominous. But it meant that maybe they were still willing to talk to me. Not much of a surprise with Jasika, but Dom …

  I took a deep breath and glanced around. The shadeling dozed on a pile of dirty clothes. It was basically the only real friend I had. Well. It and Gwen. Not a single human seemed to fit on that roster. But Jasika and Dom were willing to be around me, and they were clearly going to involve themselves in this whether I worked with them or not. And Jasika had saved my ass with the bendith. Working alone hadn’t been a good idea after all.

  Maybe this wasn’t the hill I needed to die on. If I worked with them, I could probably stop them from getting themselves killed. And, hey, it could even teach me how to operate like a normal person. Who knew? Maybe, working together, we’d even win.

  I took a deep breath and turned back to the phone.

  Bryn: I’ll be there.

  * * *

  I FELT LIKE some sort of imposter as I made my way to Helen Grady’s house for the second time in as many days. This wasn’t what I did. This was what other teenagers did while I made sure the boys ate and stopped the shadelings from breaking open the marmalade. But hey, look at me. Going to a classmate’s house after school. Maybe I was an asshole, but I was trying.

  The bowl still sat by the gate, now empty. Whether by wild fairies or stray cats, it wasn’t clear, but Dom was certainly making friends. He was awfully good at that.

  I made my way to the door and knocked. The door opened. This time, Dom looked me up and down, his wide mouth tugged into a little frown. Without a word, he stepped aside, holding the door open.

  Helen’s house still had the salmon-pink walls and worn, beige carpet I remembered from the last time I’d been here with Gooding, and unfortunately, it still smelled like thirty-year-old phone books. But here and there, Post-it notes were stuck to the lamp or the wall or the coffee table, scribbled with “Remember your foot medicine” or “Remember, you can’t drive until your new license comes in.”

  Dom closed the door behind us and swore. “Gimme a second … Just go to the kitchen, I’ll meet you there.” He went to the coffee table and grabbed a pad and pen, scribbling away at something. Ms. Helen shifted in her recliner, blinking at him in surprise.

  “Donny?”

  “Dom,” Dom sighed, ripping the sticky note off the pad and sticking it to the top corner of the TV. “You need to leave these where I put them.”

  “It blocks my view.”

  “Your meds are more important, Helen. I don’t want you to get sick.”

  “There’s too many to remember.”

  “That’s why you’ve got the organizer. Here, I’m going to put it right here on the table next to you so you don’t forget.”

  It was like watching some sort of surreal scene. Ms. Helen had always been a little bit batty. Hell, when we first moved here, a lot of people brought us casseroles or cookies in an attempt to casually spy on the weird Welsh family who’d moved into the creepy house on the hill. Helen? She’d brought us a tub of sauerkraut. Even so, I didn’t remember Helen being so far gone the last time I’d been here … but it had been a couple of years.

  After a long minute of staring, Helen reached for the pill organizer.

  “You’re a good boy, Dom, but you’re too old for your age, you know that? You need to live a little. Stop fussing over me. I’ve lived this long without a nanny.”

  “You know you love the attention,” Dom said with a laugh. “Hey, I’ve got a couple of friends over. Is it oka
y if we hang out in the kitchen?”

  A hand brushed against mine. I jumped and whirled around to see Jasika, her lips pulled into a little half grimace. Her eyes darted down to my shoulder as she fiddled with her jacket sleeve.

  “Come on,” she said softly. “Give them some privacy.”

  I followed, something uneasy curling in my stomach. “How long has this been going on?”

  Jasika stepped into the kitchen—which looked like a wallpapered nightmare from a ’70s homemaking catalog—and went straight to the cabinet for cups.

  “A while. We were all getting a little worried about her until Dom moved in.”

  “He takes care of her.” I glanced over my shoulder, but Dom wasn’t here yet. “Is this even legal? I mean … Child Protective Services can’t possibly know.”

  Jasika shrugged. “He needs a safe place to live. She needs the money from the state. And, it turns out, she also needs someone to keep an eye on her. He doesn’t mind. The situation could be a lot worse.”

  “And what happens when he turns eighteen?”

  Jasika started filling the cups from the tap and arched a brow. “For someone who’s usually tight-lipped about herself, you can be kind of nosy.”

  Touché.

  I sat in the chair and jumped back up as something twanged under my bum. It looked like a ukulele, or a cigar box that really wanted to be a ukulele.

  Jasika grinned. “Coming into the house, breaking their stuff.”

  “Oh, like you’re so perfect,” I muttered, setting the battered instrument on the table as delicately as I could manage. “I didn’t know Helen was into music.”

  “She’s not. But she doesn’t mind me making a little noise. As long as I don’t interrupt Jeopardy!,” Dom announced, ambling into the kitchen. His expression was carefully neutral as he bypassed Jasika and her water and went right to the fridge, grabbing a beer. I felt like I ought to object on principle, but we were in his house, in the presence of his legal guardian. Jasika, on the other hand, shot him a sharp look.