by Emma Savant
“He probably should fire me,” Elle said. “I’m a disaster. I ruin people’s orders, I lecture our customers about fair trade coffee, I get them to sign petitions. I’m pretty much the worst employee on the planet. The idea is that someday he’ll cave and sell me my mom’s place. I’ll put up an ‘Under New Management’ sign and whip it back into shape.”
She rubbed the spot between her eyes before looking up at me sharply.
“It’s all just daydreaming, though. I’m never going to stop being a pain in the neck, and apparently he’s never going to sell me the business, either, so we’re basically locked in this creepy pseudo-western standoff with tumbleweeds and crap rolling around in the background.”
She threw herself back against the seat, looking so annoyed I almost wanted to give her some space. I hadn’t seen one of Imogen’s glamours in a while and had forgotten what a liberating effect they had on people. Her trust glamours were even more powerful than getting people drunk was, and getting people drunk, according to Tabitha, was one of the secrets to doing our job well.
Maybe too well. Elle’s annoyance radiated out outward from her and spread through the room, strong enough that any faerie in the vicinity would wonder what was up. I met Imogen’s eyes and nodded slightly. She pursed her lips. Slowly, the rosy cloud around Imogen faded, and only her natural gold shimmer was left.
I raised my hand and waved over a waiter, who was wearing enormous baggy jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Could we get some sodas?” I said.
“Sure you don’t want Tang or something?” he said. “We got all your nineties favorites.”
“Tang?” Imogen said. She started laughing. “My dad was obsessed with that stuff when I was, like, three. Bring me some of that.”
“Just a Pepsi for me,” I said.
“Good choice,” Elle said. “Did you know they were named one of the world’s most ethical companies by the Ethisphere Institute for, like, eight years in a row?”
“I did not,” I said, and apparently the waiter didn’t either. He had one eyebrow raised at her like she was some exotic species of lizard.
“Pepsi for me,” she said, returning his expression with a warm smile.
“Weird,” Imogen said in an undertone and with a matching warm smile. I thought she was talking about the baggy-pantsed waiter until she nudged me. “Hey, Liv? Why’s the lady in the corner gawking at you like you’re an alien?”
I glanced over. The same woman who’d been staring at me before was still staring, and now I wasn’t quite so sure her expression was vacant. Her gaze was aimed right at me, and when she caught me looking, she held her stare, then smiled and slowly looked back to the stage.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Elle said, eyebrows raised.
“Who’s that drunk this early?” Imogen said. “Seriously. Not healthy.”
The band onstage was finally done setting up. I’d been keeping Daniel in the corner of my eye, but he hadn’t been doing anything interesting, just walking around and helping some teenage guy set up three microphones on stands across the front of the stage. Now, as the waiter picked his way back across the room with our drinks in hand, most of the lights in the room clicked off. Only a faint glow from the dusty windows filtered in.
A bright spotlight flashed onto the center of the stage, then cut off again. A bright greenish spot flooded my vision where the light had been, and my eyes adjusted in time to see three black-clothed figures shuffle onto the stage. Daniel was to one side; I could tell because of the faint emerald shimmer that floated off him above the line where my glasses cut off.
The next twenty minutes were decidedly weird.
Daniel and the other three performers—one girl and one guy up front with him, and a girl in the back playing drums and shaking tambourines—spent the first few minutes jerking their arms around like robots. Then the girl in the middle, Devyn, who I recognized because of the bright turquoise streaks in her hair, stepped up to the microphone and shouted “Automatons of the world, unite!”
The drums crashed behind her, then went into a roll as the performers’ movements became jerkier and sharper. Suddenly, everything stopped with loud cymbal crash.
“I hear you,” Daniel said, looking out into the crowd with his head tilted down just enough to make his dark eyes look actually creepy. “We’re the same, you and me.”
“Steel, copper, gold, titanium, our movements all the same and forged out of lifeblood torn from sacred lands!” the kid across from him shouted.
“I am forged from the heart of the earth,” Devyn cried. “My skin is heart. My pulse is the pulse of the land. Automatons, unite!”
“We are all the same,” Daniel said. “Our pure life force is welded to the tracks society has made.”
“Metal was never meant to be a cage!” Devyn said.
“We are all the same,” Daniel said, his voice falling into a chant. “One step forward, one step back, our lives a never-ending machinated repetition of the same expectations.”
“Expectations grown rusty in the wind,” the other guy intoned.
The drummer started banging everything in sight with her drumsticks. The lights flashed on and off and the three figures in front jerked wildly around, their movements still stiff and precise.
Imogen looked over at me with her eyes wide in an expression toeing the line between amused and alarmed. I knew exactly what she was feeling, even without the pulse of repressed hilarity she sent in my direction.
I looked over at Elle, certain she’d think I was a lunatic who’d dragged her off to Crazyville. But she watched the stage intently, her head tilted and her eyes glued to Devyn, who was now lying on the ground, impersonating what I thought was supposed to be a broken robot as it slowly decayed and returned to the earth.
After the robot had fully become one with the soil—to the sound of Daniel, the other guy, and the drummer softly chanting “We are all the same, we are all the same”—someone switched the lights on.
“Intermission!” Daniel announced, dropping into a low bow.
Clapping filled the room, some people sounding enthusiastic, others uncertain.
Elle’s head whipped around and her eyes bored into me. “Which one’s your brother?” she asked.
“The little skinny one,” I said. “With the dark eyes.”
“Nice,” she said. “He’s not a bad performer. Maybe if I ever get Pumpkin Spice running the way it should, these guys can come do their thing.”
“Sure,” I said. Whatever had just happened had been more bizarre than anything I’d ever seen in a café. What was weirder was my little brother doing it. Daniel had never struck me as the artsy, chanting type.
I tried to remember what type Daniel did seem like. But I didn’t know. He hadn’t bothered sharing anything with me in years, not since he’d decided our home life was a total loss and he’d be better off spending time with his friends.
Imogen was, as usual, doing that thing where she was actually reading my emotions but seemed to be reading my mind.
“Didn’t know Daniel was into this kind of stuff,” she said.
“Me neither,” I said. I sipped my soda. The ice had melted and it tasted watery and thin. “Life is full of surprises.”
An awkward silence seemed about to descend, but Imogen cut it off almost immediately.
“Speaking of surprises,” she said, turning to Elle. “You should tell us more about yourself. You seem cool but I don’t really know you that well.”
I had no idea what I would do without her here.
Elle smiled a little and shrugged. She finally seemed relaxed, like her guard was down and not just because she was venting about her dad’s café. Her confession session seemed to have broken down some barriers between us.
“What do you want to know? I mostly just avoid my psycho stepmom.”
“Cheers,” I said, raising my glass to her. “To dysfunctional parents. I have a couple myself.”
She smirked. “Glad
to meet another member of the club.”
“But I’m curious, too,” I said. “What do you like to do in your spare time? You seem like the kind of person who’d get really into stuff.”
Elle’s smile widened. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “I’m kind of a nerd. I like costuming.”
“You sew?” Imogen said, like this was the most interesting thing anyone had ever done.
“Yeah,” Elle said. “But mostly just my own stuff. Like, I make my own patterns.” She pulled out her phone. “You want to see?” she asked. It was the shyest I’d seen her yet.
Imogen and I leaned forward.
Elle held her phone out and we put our heads together as we scrolled through the photos. There were some of the ones I’d seen on Facebook, as well as a gorgeous blue ball gown that looked like the police box that had been on her Dr. Who shirt the first time I’d seen her, a sexy leather-corseted steampunk outfit, and a Sailor Moon getup that made me suddenly nostalgic for my childhood.
“These are amazing,” I said.
Elle bit her lip to try to force back her grin. “Thanks,” she said. She took the phone back. “I guess it’s kind of weird.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “You’re really good. Seriously.”
“Thanks,” she said again.
“What are you working on next?” Imogen said.
“Have you ever heard of Starship Mine?” she said.
We shook our heads, and she shrugged like she should have known.
“It’s an anime. Kind of sci-fi-romance-adventure. My best friend Kyle and I are going to a sci-fi convention in May. We’re going as Astra and Starlark. They’re our favorite characters. Kyle says I kinda look like Astra. Which is nice of him, because I totally don’t—she’s a princess from the planet Fornax and she’s super beautiful because her race is descended from the gods of beauty that ruled that quadrant of the galaxy—”
She cut off, noticing our confused expressions, and jumped back to something we could understand. “The costumes are kind of ambitious, but I figure you may as well go big or go home.”
“I’ll bet you’re going to look spectacular,” Imogen said.
It seemed like no matter what Elle did, from trying to take down her dad’s café to creating stunning costumes, she did with enthusiasm and skill. I couldn’t decide whether I liked or envied that combination more.
The lights flicked off and then on again a few times, and we turned back to the stage as the performers shuffled back, this time with bright green scarves wrapped over their black clothes—one scarf hanging loose from an arm here, another around a knee there. Daniel had two green scarves tied around his wrists, making his hands look long and floppy.
They took their places on the stage in crouched positions, and then the spotlights went up and they were performing again, this time as new seedlings born from the remains of the automatons. Devyn recited a long rhythmic poem about nature that didn’t make a lot of sense, and the other three danced in circular motions around her.
It was weird, but Elle was right: Daniel wasn’t a bad performer. He delivered his lines with confidence, and he didn’t seem embarrassed to be seen leaping around on a stage chanting “Chlorophyll! Chlorophyll! Guide me to the light!”—which was more than I could say for myself.
He made a point of avoiding me after the show, sending me strong go away emotions in short bursts. A few other people had crowded around him to talk about the performance, so I settled for catching his eye and nodding my approval. He didn’t exactly smile, but the go away message faded for just a few seconds. It wasn’t exactly a heartfelt embrace, but it was something, and more than I’d expected for crashing his party.
Chapter 7
The Pepsi had hit my system way too quickly.
“I’m going to use the bathroom before we go,” I said.
Imogen nodded, which I took to mean she’d keep Elle entertained while I was gone, so I slid out of the booth and ducked my way through the small crowd against the stream of traffic.
The bathroom was a small three-stall room off a back hallway. I stopped at the mirror for a second on the way out to try to fix my hair, which had looked fine earlier in the evening but had returned to its normal state of frizz during the performance. I combed through it with my fingers and only glanced up when a toilet flushed and another woman appeared in the mirror beside me.
Then I did a double-take, because her vivid green eyes were staring at me in a way that was going to become familiar any second now.
“Hi,” I said, trying to be assertive but not rude.
She kept staring. Her skin was a soft warm brown and her hair curled in tight ringlets around her face. Most of it was dark, but here and there a curling thread of gold spiraled its way through a curl. Her rich green eyes didn’t look quite natural. She would have been ridiculously pretty, except for the way she was staring at my reflection like she was deranged.
I tried to feel the emotions around the woman, but I got nothing. Sometimes when people were socially awkward it was because they had something magical going on, but she was a Humdrum and her aura was empty.
She kept gawking at me like I had a whole row of unicorn horns growing out of my forehead.
“Can I help you?” I said, annoyance creeping into my voice. The woman smiled, and her expression softened.
“Very possibly!” she said. I’d expected a brash voice that matched her penchant for staring contests, but the words were gentle.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ve just been looking for you for an awfully long time and I’ve really got to be sure of what I’m seeing.”
She pursed her lips and drew her eyebrows together and commenced trying to fry me with her laser beam gaze.
I was in a bathroom with a crazy woman.
I offered her a thin-lipped smile and decided my hair could stay frizzy if it meant getting out of here. I turned for the door.
“Wait!” the woman called.
I spun around on my heel. She was probably experiencing some mental health issues or had problems reading social cues. I shouldn’t get mad at her for not knowing better, I lectured myself in a mental voice that sounded way too much like my mom’s.
“I’ve got to get back to my friends,” I said, pointing toward the door.
“They’ll be fine,” she said, sounding absolutely confident. Her forehead smoothed, and she clicked her tongue and pointed at me. “You are in for a wild ride.”
“Aren’t we all,” I said, and turned again for the door.
The woman laughed, her eyebrows shooting up in surprised delight.
“I like you,” she said. “Oh, that’s good. I’m glad. Listen, I know you have to get back to your friends, but could you maybe meet me later?”
Something felt off. It took me a moment to realize what it was, and then I pulled my glasses down my nose to be sure of what I was seeing. This woman, who had been totally devoid of any magical energy a moment before, now stood in the swirling middle of a vortex of white shimmers and gold sparkles and green tendrils made of light.
I took a step back. My heart pounded.
She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “I had it pulled back in the room out there. I knew there were some Glimmer kids and I didn’t want to alarm them. I just have way too much energy sometimes.”
“You think?” I said.
I kept my glasses down. It was my turn to stare. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Your brother did really good out there,” she said. “Daniel is your brother, right? You’re Olivia Feye. Reginald Feye’s daughter.”
I should have known. She was some ultra-powerful Glimmering bigwig and in her mind, I was already cast for the role of Teenage Representative of the Magical World.
“Yup,” I said, with exactly zero enthusiasm. “That’s me.”
“How nice to meet you,” she said. She held out a hand. Not entirely sure I wanted to, I took it. Her skin was warm and seemed to throb like
it had its own heartbeat. “I’m Amani Zarina.”
It took a full three seconds for the name to register in my head. When it did, my eyes widened and my spine stiffened like it had been blasted with a freezing spell.
“Oh,” I said.
Amani Zarina.
Amani. Freaking. Zarina.
The Faerie Queen.
She put a hand on the back of her neck, seeming almost embarrassed.
“Yeah,” she said. “I try to keep that on the down-low when I’m in public. But I like coming to events like this and I thought… well, I just knew I’d meet you here tonight.”
Why I should be relevant to her was beyond me. But it wasn’t my place to question the Faerie Queen. It was no one’s place to question the Faerie Queen. I ran my tongue along my teeth, suddenly noticing how dry my mouth had become.
I was supposed to say something. I was supposed to curtsy and say something and send her a ball of white light to show my respect for her role in our world. All I could manage was a fumbling, “Um, nice to meet you. Ma’am.” Too late, I dipped a short curtsy that mostly made me look like I’d just stepped on a sprained ankle.
The actual, real-life Faerie Queen was gracious enough not to notice.
“I’m so happy to meet you,” she said. “So happy. Literally can’t even tell you.”
I should have responded with something like “The honor is all mine,” or “You’re too kind, my lady.”
Instead, I blurted out, “Why?”
She blew out a breath, her green eyes widening and catching the dim lights above the bathroom mirror.
“I can’t even begin to explain,” she said. “Anyway. Ignore me.” She held her hands up and waved them like she was trying to get me to stop, although I had a feeling she meant the message to be directed at herself. “You’d better get back to your friends. I’m so sorry for keeping you.”
This time, I managed a curtsy and a civilized reply. “No apology needed, my lady,” I said.
I paused, wondering if I should wait for a formal dismissal. She smiled and gave me a little wave.
